Steve X. Gallas was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on July 8, 1918 to a Greek immigrant father and a Turkish immigrant mother. He graduated from Reading High School in 1937, and followed in his fathers artistic footsteps, studied sculpturing at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He established the Steven X. Gallas Monumental Works company, offered hand-carving of tombstones, and often was commissioned for work for prominent individuals such as the late State Senator Gus P. Verona. After 43 years in the business, he sold his company in 1988 to Graffius Burial Vault Company based out of Sinking Spring. At the time of the sale, Gallas estimated that his firm did at least 98 percent of all cemetery work for the local Greek community, and his wifes ties to the Italian Berks Countians ensured a large portion of that market as well.

As a talented musician, he played his violin with the Reading Pops Orchestra and the Reading Philarmonic, and had a tradition of riding his horse at the head of the Armed Forces Day parade in Reading.

A June 15, 1970 Reading Eagle article announcing the first Berks Arts Festival prominently advertises Gallas opening sculpture demonstration, where he would be working on an unfinished life-sized statue of Madonna, made of Indiana limestone. There, he also exhibited the plaster model of Christ from which a stone sculpture was created for the New Greek Orthodox Church, and a bas relief plaster model of the profile of Christ. His life-size image of Christ at Gethsemane still marks the final resting place for his relatives in Gethsemane Cemetery.

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