Some of the other notes have talked about memorable characteristics of Steve, including these: kind, considerate, reliable, helpful, hard-working, fun, cheerful, passionate, intense, talented, and service and action oriented. I agree with them all.
I think I learned most from our kids while working with them, so rather than talk about characteristics in general, I think I will mostly mention things I've done or seen with Steve, and let the anecdotes describe him. Since these notes are for him, I won't worry about explaining enough that everyone who reads this will understand the details; you can ask him for details if you care. I figure many of the details only need to be mentioned to remind Steven of many memories. I'm sure some of the details are even wrong, but I can't check them with him now, so he can correct them later.
TALENT
The whole family enjoyed his talents. The one that I liked best was his music. Magic tricks were interesting (I even gave him a book of tricks for him to take on his mission). The unicycle was unique, but I never was with him much while he was riding. (He earned it helping his friend's dad with a big project one summer). The yodeling I hoped would catch on, because I really liked the Swiss days yodeling near Heber that inspired them, but it didn't go far. Music was Steve's main hobby and relaxation, I think.
He started with piano lessons at home. I started three or four of the kids together, and hoped that a couple of them would continue. Each week they had assigned songs, and would pass them off, while I clapped to mark time. Some were not much interested, and some more willing to try to follow strict timing. But Steve was the one who eventually went far beyond any of that. He had trumpet lessons for a short time, and his teacher was very impressed, saying he could be really good. However, it did not seem to me that it would likely be something he'd stay with all his life, like piano playing might. I encouraged concentrating on the piano. Eventually, he was practicing piano several hours a day. One person who inspired improvisation was Mark Seamons, a blind pianist who moved into our ward. He was well known for his ability to hear a song and play it, or improvise with it. Steven paid good attention. We even asked Mark a number of times to take Steven as a student, but for some reason Mark was not interested. I never understood why, or what kind of student Mark was looking for. It became a Christmas tradition for Mark to play O Holy Night in church as part of a piano and organ duet. Now the ward members ask every year whether Steve will be able to do it.
Steven played for Mr Torgeson for school plays a number of times. He may not have been as good at difficult piano music as some, but was the only one who could improvise things that were not written into the music when that was needed. Mr Torgeson arranged for the kids to visit various churches during the holiday season, and although it was great fun, such things took a lot of time that could have gone to homework. Steven never seemed to worry about having enough time. He seemed to be able to charm the teachers or something. We never understood why his grades didn't suffer during these times.
Steven often did solos in church meetings. Many in the audience didn't realize he used no music, or sometimes just played fancy variations and medleys of songs from the hymn book, because he would seldom say they were his own creation. This was similar to what he often played several hours a day at home. It was too bad that he would soon be leaving home, and we wouldn't have the free concerts any more.
He always seemed to worry about whether the church music was appropriate. Even during the famous Christmas duets, he didn't want his part to detract from the music itself. He made everything look so easy, it would have been simple to make it showy too. Once for a high school dinner in honor of outstanding students, he was asked to play, along several others. He asked me to play the violin (Ashoken Farewell) with him accompanying, and I didn't find it easy to make things look easy. I was honored, but felt he might have done something to focus the attention more on his playing.
ATTITUDE
Steven has been willing to "put his money where his mouth is." He didn't see many movies, but if he went to the theater and thought a movie was particularly good, he sometimes bought extra tickets after the show, and dumped them, just to support those who made the movie. Recently, when the California Proposition 8 was hot, he wrote that he had donated and hoped other would. Apparently it was a big deal in California and Arizona, but most in Utah didn't hear much about it until the vote was already over.
He has said family is the most important unit to him and he does spend a lot of time there even with heavy school assignments waitign. He always made an effort to visit both parents often after he was marrie. He has also made the church a highest priority. He has spent many hours working to make yards and house better for both families (more later). Being elected to Seminary council in high school seemed to be what he wanted more than any other honor at the school.
He was always one to choose his own path, rather than blindly follow authority. This showed up in a number of ways. He didn't care to wear a coat to wait for the bus on a cold school morning, even though his mom often suggested it would be a good idea. He was often in a hurry, jumping over half a dozen stairs to get to the front door sooner, even though I suggested it would be better for the floor, and his safety to use the steps. When the kids were younger, for holidays or fun, I sometimes took kids to a park or a school while their mom worked at home. With a number of kids, I wanted them to stay together so I could keep track of them. Steven often walked ahead, and sometimes went a different way from the rest of us, since he didn't always know which way we were going because he was way out in front. He walked to his own drum.
When he wanted to make something, he just got the tools and started. Sometimes the tools were rather dangerous for young kids, but that didn't bother him. And occasionally he had to visit the doctor's office, but it didn't seem to leave a lasting impression on his mind. He liked electricity, and tried taking an electronics class in high school. One of his first discoveries was that some kids had never seen a volt-ohm meter. He said he thought everyone's dad had one of those. After a week or two, he lost a lot of interest, because he said most of the other kids were not interested in learning; they just wanted to try wild things by plugging into an outlet and experimenting. In that case, he was less adventurous than some. It's possible that he'd already learned by experience that electricity can be dangerous. We as parents heard several stories of things we'd have never approved if we'd known of them at the time they happened. For example, there were apparently some experiments with wall outlets while we weren't around. He for some reason figured pulling the spark plug wire off the plug while the mower was running would be no problem. He discovered that the spark had a lesson or two to teach a person about that.
His attitude about school seemed fairly relaxed. He complained that teachers should give out homework assignments weeks before they were due "because they know students won't start until the last minute." Still, he managed to take hard classes and get good grades. He seemed to manage to finish assignments even when they were started at the last minute. I never quite understood how. He managed to attend BYU while living in SL. He spent many hours on Trax, trying to use a laptop, without getting sleeping and letting it drop on the floor. That allowed Melissa to attend in SL, without the travel.
As Steven was going through school while the weather was still warmer, we despaired of him getting his homework done many times. He'd say he needed to go weed some widow's garden, instead of starting homework on Saturday, and he didn't want to do homework on Sunday, so we didn't see how he would get assignments in. I still don't know how. When Steven went away to school, the widows of the ward were in a bad way.
Steven often decided on a project and figured out ways to make it happen, even when it wasn't simple. One that people still love to hear about was when he decided he and Melissa would go down the Jordan river on a canoe. He knew he could rent a canoe in Provo, and he asked about bringing it to SL. I told him the car wasn't ready for that, because the window motors were broken, and we didn't have a good way to fasten a canoe on, so it would be safe on the highway. It was a summer when the weather was especially hot, I think over 100 degrees. I suggested he find a place to rent one in SL and avoid the freeway. If a canoe got loose and turned a bit in a 60 mph wind, it could have yanked it off the car almost instantly. In the end, he managed to get the canoe in Provo, tie it onto the car well enough to get it to Salt Lake at freeway speeds, do the river trip, and get it back. Apparently, since this was in the
afternoon at the hottest part of the day, Melissa rode alongside him, spraying him with a spray bottle
for air conditioning, while he drive in 100 degree heat with windows that couldn't be rolled down. His uncle Ross still rolls in the aisle when he thinks of how that must have looked.
He isn't happy to listen to people who don't seem to know what they are doing, but pretend to. When Melissa had some strange symptoms for a few months, they visited a number of doctors. Steven decided they didn't really know what was wrong, but they weren't always willing to admit that. We have often discussed problems where he needed to depend on an expert, who wasn't apparently as expert as we hoped.
Steve has always tried to improve the place he lives. He has spent hours scrubbing old iron deposits off tubs, cleaning yards, planting, fixing old bad plumbing for which few parts are still available, and trying to leave the place better than he found it. One summer he worked for a plumber, but they were only installing new parts in new apartments, so much of what he learned about plumbing in old places has had to come from sad experience. He didn't even get to practice soldering on the summer job, because the boss wanted to do all that.
CARS
Steven has often helped while I was working on cars and needed a second hand or third hand. I used to think he enjoyed that a lot, but as he went away to the school, I found that he sometimes came back to work on the cars just to be around to talk and work together. That may have seemed like a waste of time often, since I usually get too absorbed in getting a repair done, and don't talk a lot about other things during that time. At school he used an old Ford station wagon for a few years whose engine I had rebuilt. He learned to deal with carburetors in winter, when the fast idle cam stuck occasionally. When he needed heat in the winter, and the heater core leaked, we replaced the heater once. That is an ugly job, because you have to pull the whole dashboard away from the rest of the car, then rotate the heater just so, or it won't come out. After doing that, you'd think you'd know just how to turn it to get it back in. Not so simple. I remember well one November Saturday when he was here and we discovered the timing-chain cover was leaking. We raced to put in a new gasket before dark, and with both of us, finished just as it was getting too dark to see. In those cases, there wasn't a lot of time spent talking together, but he did learn more about how to take care of a car by himself.
On the other hand, there were a few times we talked a bit more. Like the time he called me from downtown with a dead battery. It was a warm summer evening, and he had come back from BYU late, as I remember. It wasn't clear whether the battery was just weak or done for. As people walking along the sidewalks watched, we tested for a while, and decided the battery was gone. We managed to jump start it long enough to get maneuvered around among the other cars and Trax trains, then head about 8 blocks south to an Autozone to get another battery, not being sure the battery would survive that long. Then he went on home to his fancy apartment on the hill in the SL avenues for the rest of the night.
In fact, one of the earlier times when he seemed to be more serious about Melisssa, she waited on the front doorstep, when Steven and I tried to get a car back together for an hour or so. She said she didn't mind, and seemed amused to watch the efforts, but I can't imagine it was one of their better date activities.
Steven and I had our differences about safe driving. I fall asleep easily when driving late at night (or even during the day) when I'm tired. Steven would often leave Salt Lake after midnight very tired and head back to Provo after a long weekend. I'm not sure how he managed to stay awake, or if he always did, but at least he's still around today.
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JOBS
Steven announced near the end of a school year that he was going to go back East and sell satellite dishes to earn money for the summer. He'd heard that some of the salesmen (students, mostly) made good money. We only had a day or two to think about things, and as parents were worried that he might have a real surprise. Sometimes it's only a rare salesman who does well. In fact, I was out of town on a business trip when I heard about it. He would need a car, and I wasn't sure the station wagon was ready for something like that. He insisted that he was going to do it, whatever it required.
It turned out to be an adventure. He was getting out of school about the time he was supposed to drive back East. He also had been working on a project to develop a "dune buggy" for a competition in Logan that would be the same weekend. His plan was simply to stop off at home for an hour or two, pick up everything he needed for the summer after finishing finals, head for Logan for the weekend, and drive back East—all without falling asleep on the way. That sounded very dangerous to me, because when you go in a caravan with others, you usually don't feel good about stopping the others if you get sleepy.
Lisa decided he should take her car. It seemed to me much better fit for the trip. The transmission had been rebuilt a few thousand miles before, so I didn't expect a problem with it. Along the way, he had the low-oil pressure light come on. But he did make it all the way in one piece. While there the transmission failed, so he had no reverse gear. When he was selling each day, he apparently always had a partner. I'm not sure how the partner felt about getting out and pushing the car whenever it needed to back up. He had no air conditioning, and it was pretty humid during the summer. But it didn't seem to bother Steven.
The first month or two, I think he was quite worried about earning enough to make the job worthwhile. He did get the transmission fixed before coming home, which cost a significant portion of what he'd earned, I think, up to that time. (He was careful to have the shop write down the warranty conditions in detail.) He had the water pump fail once in a small town, and somehow managed to find a place to fix it in time to get back that night. I think it was a Ford dealer place, but it leaked the next day, so he had to finish the job himself. And the money wasn't rolling in very fast.
He said he decided he would only sell honestly. Apparently some of the guys were quite good at forcing sales in situations where people really couldn't afford them, or didn't fully understand what they were getting into. Luckily, the last few weeks of the summer job, he got a chance to work with a super salesman, and made the vast majority of his summer money in the last few weeks. He felt he'd really learned to sell the right way, without using sleazy tactics. And I think he came home with over $20,000 for a summer. Since he didn't go back to that job, it may not have been all pleasant memories, but he had accomplished more than he expected when he started the job. The next summer, he worked part time as a salesman for a painter, lining up and estimating jobs for the painter. It should be very handy to have a backup profession like that, since you can find sales jobs all over the country.
He got a job as an intern with Honeywell his last summer for school. He had been hoping to go to the
"skunk works," where some of the world's most famous airplanes have been designed. At Honeywell, he got a chance to work with some of the upper management of the division he was in. He was often frustrated, because he was supposed to get information from groups who weren't interested in sharing it, for various reasons. And I think it was good practice for what he is doing as his full-time job today. And he decided to become a programmer to create a tool that they apparently still use today. Microsoft Excel is sort of the business all-purpose tool. He learned enough VBA programming to create an Excel tool so the management could look at the risks and rewards of a number of projects. He spent a lot of time that he didn't need to just to make the program fancier. I think they are still using the tool now.
He has always been interested in learning to manage people, to get them to agree and cooperate when they may not care to work together. I think he didn't go into business school to become rich and famous, but simply to make business work better and earn enough to support a family. He practices on tough people where he gets an opportunity. One example was getting the apartment they lived in high in the SL avenues. The owner was an older lady who didn't seem to trust anyone too much, and who lived upstairs. Initially, they thought they'd get the apartment easily, but the lady apparently changed her mind, and Steven had to talk hard to get in. She never did let them have a washer and dryer there, even though the hook ups were in place, but she did learn to get along with Steven.
HELPING OTHERS
Once Steven was about out of school, he got the full time job he now has. He decided that he would spend some time before starting the job in Arizona helping us with our yard rather than just vacationing. I didn't think I'd start it then , because there wasn't enough time because other things came up unexpectedly. Steven just came and started digging up large bushes and pruning and fixing things up. Before this project was over, we'd hauled two rental trucks full of branches and bushes to the dump. (And the second time, the truck refused to start at the dump for about 20 minutes, so that was exciting). Steven decided to cut down a large branch of a cottonwood tree in our back yard. It was tricky because if it fell exactly right, all was well. If it didn't, it would either crush a metal shed, or mash the person cutting it off. It was probably 30 feet long and very heavy.
I had decided the tree limb, which was fairly high off the ground, was too dangerous to cut off, but Steven kept trying to find ways to make it work, using ropes and various kinds of cuts. I figured it wasn't worth the risk. One day, I came home and found the limb on the lawn in the back yard.
In addition to that work, we used a borrowed tiller and a lot of shoveling to dig out and level several areas of the yard that had grown thick. The tiller was giving a lot of trouble, because it had a stuck valve and couldn't be adjusted for speed well. Some home mechanic had fixed it too well. Because of such problems, I think Steven rented a tiller and a truck while I wasn't around. Steven found the best price for sod and ordered a truck load and all that was in place within a week. Our yard was transformed from an "old people's yard" into something a bit more modern and maintainable. It's been great this year not to worry about it. I was assuming I wouldn't get such a thing done until retirement, when I had more time.
Happy Birthday to a kind, considerate, reliable, helpful, hard-working, fun, cheerful, passionate, intense, talented, and service and action oriented guy, Steven. We certainly feel lucky to have you in our family and learn from you.
