Please share your memories of Steve (click here)
July 7, 2008
Steve Sigur taught math in the high school at Paideia for 29 years. In that time he touched the lives of many alumni, current students, colleagues and friends. Many of them have called and written with expressions of grief and cherished memories at the news of Steve’s death on Saturday, July 5.
37 Responses to “Please share your memories of Steve (click here)”
July 7th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Steve was one of the best teachers I have had at any level of academia. While it’s been noted that Steve had a great aptitude for teaching both the mathematically challenged and the mathematically ambitious, I can personally vouch for his teaching abilities in my own mathematical classification. I was very good at math, and math came somewhat easily to me, but unlike other top students that Steve helped propel into the uppermost levels of mathematic thought, I had no interest in math beyond the 50 minutes that I was in class 5 days a week. Steve asked me several times if I would like to drop the “busy work” of my trigonometry curriculum to work on more advanced functions and theories, but after my apathy towards becoming one of his math disciples was apparent, he stopped asking me, but he thought no less of me. Steve was still as interested in me as a person, and still wanted to be my advisor, and connect with me in other ways, even if it was not going to be through math. I spent a lot of time around Steve during my four years in high school, most notably in the bookkeeping and timing duties of varsity basketball games that we shared together, in discussing guitar playing and music in general, and through an independent holography project that I worked on over several consecutive short terms with just him and my best friend, James Greiner. I took this class not because of any keen interest in the art of making holograms, but really because of the chance to work alongside and hang out with two good people in Steve’s room for 2 ½ hours a day. The academic guidance and independence that Steve gave us was second to none: he brought us books by experts in the field, he introduced us to a friend who was a hologram hobbyist, he arranged for us to have a key to the library basement to work on our set-up after school hours, and he let James and I leave campus several times on our own (during school) to pick up chemicals from the photography store. He even let James and I go watch the 6th grades’ “The Revels” performance if we agreed to make up the class hour at a later date. Steve was my advisor for 3 year in high school and wrote a beautiful letter on my behalf for my college application. After detailing several of my accomplishments in the classroom and in the general Paideia community, at the end of the letter he wrote “Most importantly, I believe in Erik”. I don’t know if he puts this in all of the letters that he writes for people, but regardless, that last sentence has stuck with me to this day, and in some of my darkest hours, brought me solace and confidence.
–Erik Meadows ’95
July 7th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I 1st met Steve Sigur at Nortside HS back in 1972. By luck he was my homeroom teacher. This was wonderful in that I’m a science guy and I had Math and Physics independent studies with him. He taught me a lot of neat things. After he left NHS and went to Paideia, he and I kept in contact and I would occasionaly be invited over to talk to his students. Since I was heavily into holography during the 1980s, Steve had me come over and get his students started. That is all that was needed as Steve spent all of the time with the kids exploring the making of holograms. I remember he was really great at getting students involved in science fair projects. And these weren’t your simple run of the mill turnkey projects. These would be quite involved and challenging. He had helped me a lot.
Apart from science and math, Steve had his music hobby and I recall back when I was in 9th grade he was making flutes. But he commented about needing more bamboo and I told him a bunch was growing near where I lived so he came over one day after school and we hiked down the railroad tracks and obtained bamboo. This was a case where his size was helpful in that he could just pull it up out of the ground. We all spent the next few weeks making flutes. Even though I can’t play, I learned to appreciate their manufacture and the issues with tuning them.
During the summer he would venture off on amazing trips in the outwest wilderness. I recall one of his trips where he showed to me on a map of Alaska where he had hiked. His path was a line (and not just a little dot) on a map of our biggest state. That man could cover some ground!
But he had touched many lives in many wonderful ways. I actually learned to appreciate Donte’s Divine Comedy even though I wasn’t a student at Paideia, but he enlisted me to help with lighting and using lasers as part of the show.
Steve is like Tigger – he’s the only one! You will be missed.
Clay S. Turner
July 7th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Steve was one of my favorite teachers. Even though I’m only going to be a freshman this year, he has done so much to help. When my brother was at Paideia he had a horrible math teacher his freshman year. The next year he got Steve and Steve taught him that math could not only be fun but that he could do it. We are eternally grateful and Bill could not have gotten where he is today without Steve’s help. We will miss you!
July 7th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
He stood 6’6″, perhaps, and his protruding stomach seemed nearly as wide as his legs were long. His scraggly, unkempt beard reached nearly that far, though his t-shirt rarely did. Somewhere beneath the tip of the beard and the tip of the shirt you could usually see his gut sticking out. A toothy half-smile almost always peered out from behind the beard. Steve Sigur looked like Paul Bunyan gone native, and he lovingly towered over 29 years of high school math classes before his passing yesterday from brain cancer, at the age of 62.
It was high school, and, poor nerd, I was suffering through everything that high school is — raging hormones, catastropic depression, extracurricular catatonia, social neurosis, academic pressure, peer pressure, and the impossibility of just trying to wake up in the morning. He had taught at my school since it was three years old, and was as much of an institution as the bricks. Paideia School (founded 1971), once a longhaired experiment, was now a respected private prep school in the mold of so many others in Atlanta, training the children of professors (like me), doctors, lawyers, and professionals to get into a good college. Steve didn’t care: he wanted us to love learning. Dropping aphorisms like a zen master and looking like ZZ Top, for 50 minutes a day, he succeeded.
His classroom reflected his appearance: messy, computers everywhere, geometry projects (“three-dimensional shadows of four-dimensional objects,” he explained happily) hanging from the ceiling, one whiteboard for teaching and one adjacent for math meet schedules, favorite quotes, and other things; in his closet was a MIDI keyboard, behind his desk a broken sitar. He was unselfconsciously slovenly, had a childlike passion for math, and an overwhelming desire to share his enthusiasm with everyone who came into his class. His percussive laugh masked the social awkwardness of a man who loved math for a living, who lived alone, whose entire life was teaching. Somehow he had an inexplicable charisma.
For my other classes, I bought $80 textbooks and was frequently reminded what would be on the AP exam. In Steve’s class, I received handout copies from century-old Russian books he’d bought at a book sale, because he said they taught logarithms better before the fall of the tsar. My other classes had an arc, a readily apparent lesson plan; in Steve’s class, we’d be unleashed for days at a time onto his computers, for us to mess around and “teach ourselves” by playing with synesthetic picture and sound math utilities like Geometer’s Sketchpad, Mathematica, and Bryce. If we had fun, we’d teach ourselves to learn, he said.
Every Monday morning there was a school assembly in which students and teachers would give the announcements for the week, concerts, plays, games, meetings, teams. I got up and made jokes about chess club. A nice 40-minute break from class. It often went a little longer at the end, if a group of students came out onto the stage from the wings and began to play. When they did, the guitars and vocalists often changed, but the rhythm section was usually constant. On drums was a literature teacher, John Capute, who kept a kit in his classroom and let students try it out. On bass was Steve Sigur, a foot taller than everyone else, motionless and smiling.
We always heard stories that he spent the summers hiking alone in the Pacific Northwest or Canada. You could read the serenity on his face. When he was much younger, he’d been an athlete — his height still bore witness to his basketball youth — but at this point in his life he was clearly more of a mountain man. He quoted the Tao Te Ching and Devo, and at some point I began to suspect that he was one of the few people I’ve ever met who truly knew the secret to his own happiness. He attracted the weirdos, math geeks, and nerds, of course, because he was one of them. He was the advisor to the math team, and they met in his room. But even the kids too popular to be seen in his classroom after hours enjoyed the time they spent there — and, if only for those moments, enjoyed math.
He taught the accelerated track and remedial track, the smart kids and the dumb kids, the kids who fit in and the kids who didn’t, and I’m still not sure which one I was. But we all loved him. Everyone did.
He was the best teacher I ever had. I’ll miss him.
This was originally published on Huffington Post.
-Alex Remington ’02
July 7th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
“You may not speak math, but you think math!” This is a direct quote from Steve, when he and I were discussing my perspective that math is a foreign language that I don’t understand. Before I started working at Paideia, I never had anyone to talk to about my crazy ideas in physics. Steve always discussed physics with me and he always encouraged my interest in it no matter how simple my understanding was or how angry I was over the concept of time. From naming the stars in the night sky on the senior trip to inviting me to sit in on his 4th Dimension classes, Steve was always generous with his knowledge and considerate of the opinions of others. Although I am an employee at Paideia, I consider Steve my teacher as well. He taught me about math, physics, and philosophy simply by taking the time to listen to me and replying in a way that let me know that he cares about me as well as the subject. Steve is the smartest and kindest person I will ever know, and that is a rare formula indeed. I love and miss Steve very much. Words are not enough to describe such a wonderful person as Steve, and unfortunately, I don’t speak math.
July 7th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Steve was one of the people who most encompassed what Paideia, for me and for most of my fellow classmates in the class of 2000, was all about. He not only encouraged independent thought, but did so in the most brilliant of ways, gently encouraging his students to think outside the box and therefore not just arrive blindly at the answers, but gain a deeper understanding of how they got there. It is somewhat ironic to describe his courses this way, because they often lacked structure, but the classes Steve offered taught logic and reason in their absolute purest form. It is impossible to describe how unique and special it was to have the opportunity to learn from him.
***
I had lunch with Steve soon after he received his diagnosis in the spring of 2007. I was finishing my third year of medical school at the time, and we spoke all about the surgery, the treatments he was thinking about initiating at that time, and the lingering symptoms he was having postoperatively. Steve had more vitality in him than anyone I knew, and I reveled at how bravely and openly he was approaching this incredible upheaval of his day-to-day life.
Then, in May of 2008, I was visiting Atlanta, and went to Panera one afternoon for lunch. Steve was there, and I invited him to join me. During our time together, it became obvious how much self-reflection he had been through over the year since I’d seen him last. As he shared some of his thoughts with me, I realized all over again how much there was to admire in him and learn from him, not about math this time, but about how to live one’s life.
Steve built the most incredible kind of family in Paideia, the kind everyone dreams of but few people are lucky enough to enjoy. His students, their families, and his colleagues were the people he had cared about the most, and he seemed to know that day at lunch just how much he had touched each and every one of our lives and how much we cared about him in return. Though he still had more to do – his book, lectures this summer, more courses to teach and countless ideas to pursue – he was humbly and beautifully aware of just how much he meant to everyone around him. I like to think that wherever Steve is now, he sees how his spirit and his memory live on in every one of us who had the joy of learning from him, and from having him in our lives for as long as we did.
July 7th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
He is the only Math teacher I ever knew who could recite the prologue to the Canterbury Tales from memory.I remember he told me how the Zen painters would sit before their canvas, sometimes for hours, apparently waiting, and suddenly in one movement they would create an image of a mountain, a rock, a tree. I remember drawing and building hypercubes for hours that flew by in his room. I remember just sitting, having lunch, listening to him noodling away on the banjo. I remember, when a friend of mine visited school one day she asked as she eyed Steve ushering half-dayers to their rides, “why do they let that homeless man hang around with the kids?”
Steve, I will miss you with all of my heart. You, like so many of my teachers at Paideia, were my second family. You were one of those who raised me. In your subtle care, I, and so many others, learned that we loved things and knew things we never thought possible. I hope that one day I may come to have even just a small part of your effortless wisdom and your ease with being alive.
You hung the moon and all the stars.You are deeply loved and will always be missed.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Steve, it’s hard to believe that you’re gone. I read something today about how angels are all around us; people doing things out generosity and kindness asking nothing in return. You were quite an angel. It’s sad that it takes your passing for me to realize just how much of an angel you were, but I guess that’s how I learn this lesson. You were the first person at Paideia that I could talk to about anything at all and I’m grateful for that.
The things you taught me were more than just science and math. You taught me lessons about life and growing up that I refelect on to this day and I’m sure will contemplate for the rest of my days.
My mother once commented that you would be a wonderful father. I agree now more than ever. In fact you were like a father to me and so many others.
I wish you peace. You will always be close to my heart.
Love,
Jeff Goddard
Class of 1991
July 8th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Like most people who choose to spend their life in academia, I have had a large number of really wonderful teachers in my life. But even in that elite group, there is a handful of teachers whose dedication and ability transcends the rest and made them truly outstanding. The kind of teachers who you remember your whole life and think of on a near daily basis. The kind of teachers you can only hope your own children get to experience. I have had a handful of those teachers.
And then there was Steve.
Whatever you think the platonic ideal of a great teacher may be, Steve surpassed it. He loved the subjects he taught, and he loved his students. And at its core that is what teaching is all about.
It is hard to put into words the influence Steve has had on my life. I doubt that anyone other than my parents has been a greater influence on who I am today. The piece that strikes many people as odd is that I only took one class from him, and by that time his influence on me had long seeped in. But he was a presence in my life that inspired me to become a mathematician and to become a teacher, and to pursue a career where doing math and teaching math were not separate entities, but instead played off of each other in a natural way. Several years ago, as soon as I finished defending my doctoral dissertation, I immediately printed off three copies. One was for my own bookshelf, one was for my parents, and one I sent to Steve. He sent back a note saying that he couldn’t understand a word of it, but that he was proud nonetheless, and to this day it makes me extremely happy to think about that note.
One of my favorite things about Steve is the way that he would blur the line between teacher and student. In fact, much of the time when he was teaching he entered into a dialogue with the student, where we would each contribute to the learning and we would go back and forth, learning from each other. Steve never seemed to have the worry that some teachers do that they need to appear like they know everything and often it wasn’t clear whether Steve knew where a given conversation or mathematical train of thought was going.
As I said, I only took one class with him at the end of my Paideia career, but one of the things that was so wonderful about Steve was that he didn’t view the relationships with students as ending at the classroom door. Most of my interactions with him came about through extracurricular activities. I have many fond memories of weekends spent at math tournaments, or of the weeks we would spend in Athens for the state science fair. Now that I am a teacher, it is even clearer to me how rare it is to find someone who would give that much time and energy and spend that number of evenings in a bowling alley with a group of geeky sixteen year olds. Or take a group of four students to the Art Institute of Atlanta one afternoon because there was a talk about the fourth dimension which he thought sounded interesting and thought we might also enjoy. That was just the kind of thing Steve would do. He had wide-ranging interests – he used to say that he loved to subscribe to magazines almost at random for a year just to read lots of articles about Chinese poetry or Geology or whatever the topic happened to be – and he loved to share these interests with anyone who would listen. And whether or not you thought you had any interest in a topic, he would almost always suck you in and you would want to learn more about it along with him.
The selfish part of me would like to think that my relationship with Steve was unique and special, but perhaps the most impressive thing about him is that it wasn’t. If anything, the fact that someone like me – the captain of the math team who did math projects for the science fair and eventually became a math educator himself – was heavily influenced by someone like Steve is probably a cliché. But Steve formed bonds with many many students. There were the students who gravitated towards him because of math, but there were also students who gravitated to him because of interests in music, in basketball, in lasers, or just because of his personality, which was inviting and kind and in many ways awe-inspiring.
I could go on, and tell many more stories, but anyone who knew Steve has dozens of their own and really they all come down to one thing: Steve was unique. In fact, I know that it isn’t proper english to say it, but Steve was very unique. There are other great teachers who care about their students, and there are other eclectic personalities with wide-ranging interests. But there was only one Steve. And the world is a worse place now that he has left it.
I miss you already.
Darren Glass, Class of 93
July 8th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Jr. High was not an easy time for me. Like all kids going through puberty, I was socially awkward, insecure, and often felt alone. Steve’s room was an oasis for me and others like me. Kate Pierce (she was Kate at the time) and I would escape to his class room at lunch. Unlike the Jr. High, in his room it was cool to be smart and interested in Math. And no one would “charge” you with a petty crime, or ask you to write a 5 page paper on how you were traumatized in kindergarden, even if you weren’t. He was there to talk to.
Steve Sigur was an institution at Paideia. He taught us all so much. But was more than a math teacher. He was a friend, adviser, and mentor to us all. He believed in all of his students and because of that we succeeded. He supported all his students and was one of the only teachers to ever come out to a cross country meet to cheer us on.
I don’t think anyone can forget meeting Steve for their first time. He was a giant of a man, his T-shirt (with some math logo on it) was usually untucked and a bit of belly might be showing, his thick, long, red beard hung down and you got the distinct impression that he would have fit in on a viking man of war. Once you spoke to him you quickly realized he had no desire to pillage or loot, only to teach.
His sense of humor and ability to roll with the punches made him a joy to be around. Twice he ran out of gas on the way to or from Math Team meets. But the entire time he kept a good humor about it. Laughing he said! “Oh I see now,” as he put on his glasses and stared at the dash board, “that’s the engine temperature gauge, not the gas. No wonder it wasn’t dropping. I thought that was strange.” He laughed, told me to start running to the next exit for gas, and we still made it to the tournament in time.
On Steves’ website he has posted “Polya’s Ten Commandments for Mathematics teachers” He embodied theses commandments.
1. Know your subject.
Steve knew more about math than anyone I ever knew. He was working with Professor John Conway at Princeton on a new book about triangles.
2. Be interested in your subject.
Steve lived for teaching and for math. He loved to teach. At lunch he could usually be found in his room talking to students about math. He was a coach for the GA state math team as well as the Paideia Math team.
3. Know about the ways of learning: the best way to learn anything is to discover it by yourself.
Steve taught the highest level class as well as the the classes for those that struggled learning math. Steve used to tell a story of a student who used to learn better when the student was walking around the room. Since none of the other students seemed bothered by it he let them walk around. Other teachers might have told the student to sit down but not Steve. Nontraditional learners flourished in his class room, but not at the expense of others.
4. Try to read the faces of your students, try to see their expectations and difficulties, put yourself in their place.
He was empathetic and understanding. He understood life happens.
5. Give them not only information, but “know-how,” attitudes of mind, the habit of methodical work.
6. Let them learn guessing.
7. Let them learn proving.
His projects taught us how to solve any math problem rather than how to pass a test. Though it seemed we had no real curriculum after analysis, I fell I was prepared for calculus as well as if not better than my peers who had not had Steve. When I took math classes at GA Tech I was able to quickly solve the problems that others were at a loss to even approach.
8. Look out for such features of the problem at hand as may be useful in solfing the problems to come — try to discose the general pattern that lies beind the present concrete situation.
Seemingly tangential lectures would often come around to make sense later.
9. Do not give away your whole secret at once — let the students guess before you tell it — let them find out for themselves as much as is feasable.
Steve was the master of letting students learn. Anyone who took his short term classes can remember the joy of creating your own project. Weather it was building a hyper-tetrahedron (or a 20 cell) or creating a new projection system for maps. He let us explore and discover math.
10. Suggest it; do not force it down their throuts.
Who else would have a conversation with you about a mathnight mare I had the night before and how it related to my understanding of the 4th dimension. His entire methodology of teaching was to let us learn to enjoy the subject. I thought I wanted to be a math major after his classes. Years later when I came back and told him I was a history major, he said, “I always thought you would end up in history.” All along, he knew us better than we knew ourselves, and he introduced us to sides of ourselves we never knew.
Thank you Steve for teaching us, befriending us, and loving us. You will be missed.
-Adam Domby ’02
July 9th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Dear Steve,
I graduated from Paideia in 1987. I want you to know that over twenty years later I still smile when I think of Paideia and you are one of the big reasons for that. I came to Paideia in 10th grade from a public school where teachers were hired to be sports coaches first and teachers second. That school promoted and demanded conformity and dullness. Paideia was like a breath of fresh air to me.
From the first time I set eyes on you at my interview and tour of Paideia I thought “well, this is different”. I loved that you dressed however you wanted and how informal you were. In fact, on that first day that I visited Paideia my mother mistook you for the groundskeeper. She was a little shocked after she stopped to ask you a question and you you introduced yourself as one of the teachers. I loved that moment and smirked to myself and thought “if this is one of the teachers then this is a good sign.”
I liked you right away. You talked to me in a way that was relaxed and genuine and did not have any trace of condescension.
I loved that you delved into your hobbies and passions and made them come alive for your students…. mathematics, computers, music, fractals, etc. Even in subjects that were hard for me or that I was not initially looking forward to I would find that your excitement about them would spark my curiosity.
My favorite class that I took with you was a short-term class called The Science of Music.
I loved learning how and why different instruments produced the sounds they did.
I still remember being literally awestruck when you showed us how two speakers could be placed apart from each other and moved towards each other slowly until their sound waves would cancel each other out and suddenly produce silence. I distinctly remember that moment and how I was overcome with a strange mix of dawning comprehension and humbling dumbfoundedness of how science, mathematics, art, aesthetics, the physical world and some mystery behind it all were all woven together. A minute or so later it was time for our break and everyone started milling around. I sat there for at least 10 minutes by myself repeating the experiment over and over again with delight and complete absorption.
Steve, as a teacher you insisted that we look harder at things until we could see patterns and order that contained and revealed beauty.
You modeled for me that there was no need to apologize for being smart or simply curious about things and how one could use that intelligence to look at the world with wonder and amazement.
That approach to the world has enriched my life tremendously and now carries over to influence how I interact with my own young children.
Thank you, Steve.
All the best,
Paul Geduldig
Class of ’87
July 9th, 2008 at 3:17 am
When I read through of the entries made so far I find I can relate to each. There are elements of each that ring so true that I could take parts of what was written, insert them here, and feel entirely comfortable that I had the same incredible experiences.
My first impression of him was as a near giant (I don’t think I had actually seen anyone that tall in person before…and I was 13 when I first met him). I have indelibly stamped into my memory an image of him lumbering around Mother Goose with his walking stick. And I remember how he used to clasp my shoulder when he came up to me…and no matter where I was heading I would always end up taking time to chat with him. But it wasn’t because I had to walk and talk with him. I wanted to. Steve really was easy to talk to. If you wanted to talk about math, science, music, whatever, you could do that and not have to worry about anything.
I still chuckle to myself when I think that I was on the Math Team because I really wasn’t that good at math – at least not the kind of problems that we had on those match challenges. But I really liked the trips and I think that was just what Steve had in mind. Steve also made it possible for me to complete a science project. Taking classes at Georgia Tech…thanks to Steve.
While I could go on about what all Steve did and what that meant for me, it would just be a ramble. Let me just end with this: Steve was simply a genuine, good-hearted man who loved teaching, learning, and interacting with people. I am a better person for having learned from him. And I will miss him.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Like many people who knew him. I feel very lucky to have had Steve Sigur as a teacher. Without his endless patience and genuine desire to help everyone he met understand the beauty of math and numbers, and their relevance to literally everything, I can honestly say that my life would be very different today.
I have been a Cinematographer for over ten years. Cinematography is a science as much as it is an art. The science of Cinematography is based on light and time. Light has a unique relationship with time. In many ways light is exempt from the constraints which time imposes on the rest of the universe. For this reason, and many many others, the science of Cinematography involves keeping track of, and responding to, a seemingly endless series of constantly changing variables. Or to put it another way, a Cinematographer is constantly doing math in their head whilst carrying on, and keeping track of, multiple conversations with their fellow collaborators for hours at a time.
Like many others before and after me. Steve took the time to understand me, so that he could understand how I saw numbers, so that he could reveal their significance to me in the most impact-full way possible. HE reached ME by explaining that numbers and math were not invented, but discovered. Such is the essence of the Paideia philosophy.
Steve was absolutely indispensable to my ability to understand numbers and the limitlessness of their relationships to one another. My ability to understand this, has itself been indispensable to my lifelong journey as a Cinematographer. It is no exaggeration to say that I could not do it without Steve. “Math is everything, everything is math, math is everywhere, everywhere is math.”
I am grateful to have had the opportunity last year to tell Steve all of this in person and to make it clear to him how much he will always mean to me. Whenever I feel myself missing him, which will be often, I take comfort in knowing that I can always find him by looking where the numbers are, EVERYWHERE.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:01 am
As fair director of the DeKalb Science and Engineering Fair it was my job to contact all the schools in my area to get them to participate. Steve Sigur brought his students. This was one of the few private schools that participated in this mostly public school event.
Steve had obviously nurtured the love of the project in his students. They did not come to compete, rather to share their research. His students were often surprised when they won. And year after year, Steve brought winners to the fair.
I remember wonderful conversations with Steve as the students competed. He was someone I looked forward to seeing every year as time for the fair came around. He was always ready to help with any chore needed to make events for the fair happen. He had no assigned duties, he just wanted to be helpful.
I know of one of his students, who is a personal friend. He has gone on to academic success at one of the most competitive schools in the nation. He still shows that sense of quiet delight, with no bragging about his success. He learned well from Steve. I am sure there are many others carrying on Steve’s legacy.
Marion Reeves
July 9th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Dear Steve –
When I think of Paideia and the impact it had on my life, you are one of the first faces that pops into my mind. You accomplished something for me that I have the utmost respect and gratitude for, you taught me by engaging me with your passion and excitement for math and numbers.
Your class was the high point of my day through out high school and I found myself gravtitating towards more and more of your subjects to spend more time in your class room.
Through you I was excited to learn, discover and explore numbers, math and fractals. You created an environment where learning was secondary to the exploration you lead on us. You wanted us to share in your enthusiam of math and along that path we learned as well. You were able to present complex problems in a simplified manner for all of us to understand, I was comprehending matimatical equations far above what I thought was my level, all due to you and your patience to work with me.
I am saddened to know that the next time I walk the halls of Paideia I won’t see you there. You are so much a part of the Paideia experience that I hold so dear in my heart. I am privleged to have been taught by you and to have been able to share in your enthusiam.
You will be missed by all of those whose lives you touched, especially me.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:20 am
When I was at Paideia, we would say Steve didn’t “drive” his pickup truck, he “wore” it. One day picking us up in front of the school, my dad rear-ended Steve’s truck and, although Dad is 6′ himself, I think he gulped when he saw this giant get out of the truck and approach our car. But, grinning and casually lumbering up to survey the damage, Steve acted as though it were he who had been intruding on our space. He bent the bumper back as best he could, and with a hearty laugh and handshake with Dad, he went on his way. Jim and I will never forget Steve getting out of that truck – our first interaction with the gentle giant we would later know as our math teacher.
Through Steve I discovered fractals and the literal beauty of math. But I also discovered, from that first experience, what it means to approach problems with a gentle and generous spirit and a smile on your face.
–Kate
July 9th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Over the last few days, I’ve read countless tributes to Steve Sigur, accurately describing him as a miraculous teacher, an astute mathematician, and a creative scientist. But at heart, I think, Steve was a magician. He began his “Functions, Statistics, and Trigonometry” class not with an equation, but with a note. His bass guitar hooked to a self-made electronic device that resembled a cold-war-era Air Force radar, Steve played a long, deep “D.” A sinuous wave appeared on the radar’s screen. “I submit to you that this is what music looks like,” Steve said, and then, sketching on his blackboard an equation for the wave produced by the musical note, Steve proved that math is music. Steve drew up several more equations – a multitude of x’s and y’s, incomprehensible variables, all gibberish to a kid like me, whose mediocre faculties for mathematics were matched only by an indisposition for athletics.
“Can anyone tell me what this is?” Steve asked. We shrugged our shoulders while Steve played a couple of notes.
The gibberish turned out to be Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.”
Steve sketched more gibberish equations, attached a microphone to his radar and recited to us a line from the Tao Te Ching. The distinct rhythm of his voice registered peaks and valleys on the radar. The gibberish on the blackboard was a poem.
I didn’t understand how Steve divined music and poetry from a handful of numbers. I still don’t.
But I was mesmerized by him, this tall, bearded Merlin in a cap emblazoned with the first eight digits of pi, who could pull poems and songs out of the stony numerical abyss.
In the decade since I graduated from high school it was comfortable to know that at every reunion, at every Thanksgiving feast, Steve would be there, presiding in an ever-ripping t-shirt over an ever-changing tableau of students, teachers, and alums. Surrounded by variables Steve was a constant. And from Steve’s class I know that a constant is constant, a constant is infinite, a constant cannot disappear. Therefore, I submit to you that Steve cannot be gone. He must be out there, somewhere, perhaps in the Canadian forests or the Colorado Rockies, or perhaps in the infinite folds of the Mandelbrot Set, the fractal whose spidery picture hung in Steve’s classroom. He must still be there, in those x’s and y’s, in those incomprehensible variables, in those gibberish equations, still there, waiting to be divined.
July 9th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Imagine a high-school teacher loading a pack of teen-agers at variable maturity levels into a couple of vans for a grueling cross-country drive, followed by a five-day wilderness hiking-and-camping adventure. My classmate Duncan Sprattmoran did much of the driving, at one point through heavy fog, as I recall. On about the third day of our hiking trip, Steve was advised by a Glacier National Park ranger that they were closing camp sites in our wake because we were being trailed by grizzly bears. The inevitable teen dramas proved equally treacherous.
But, the memory of those breath-taking natural vistas remains vivid and magical for me, 30+ years later. It was a life-changing opportunity to see those amazing glaciers, which might be gone by 2030, and to develop a deep respect for planet Earth.
The infamous Paideia “self-contained classroom” of the 1970s offered unchained investigations of math, physics, music, computers, literature, writing and more. We were asked to write songs and to memorize the beginning of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I was going through a strange experimental singing phase that involved trying to hit notes high enough to break glass while hammering artlessly on an old Gibson guitar. A few years ago, Steve gave me a disc containing audio files from a number of those early “performances.” Hearing my adolescent musical stylings nearly caused me to drive off the road, it was so embarrassing. Yet, Steve thought it was wonderful, or so he said. He offered only encouragement, in its purest and most consistent form.
I was a horrible math and science student, too preoccupied with adolescent problems to absorb much technical information. But Steve somehow managed to convey to me the one physics lesson that saved my life. The lesson began with a series of chalkboard diagrams illustrating Newton’s Third Law of Motion. There were emphatic-looking arrows, and maybe my eyes began to glaze. Suddenly, Steve said: “In other words, if you apply the brakes in your car after you’re already in the curve, IT’S TOO LATE.” He repeated this warning several times. I remembered his words at many opportune moments.
Steve and I kept in touch over the years. I saw him at the University of Maryland, and he and Gerry Landers came to my wedding. After he became ill, I called Steve and apologized for being out of touch. He said: “There are friends you kill time with, and there are friends you might not see for weeks or years, but just knowing of their existence makes all the difference in your life.” He told me that he loved me. This touched me more than I can explain, to know that Steve genuinely cared for me. I will hold his words in my heart forever. I know from reading the many tributes, and from talking to his countless friends at the hospital that Steve bestowed a similar gift of love on everyone around him. What a fabulous lesson.
I was so happy to see Steve surrounded by an incredible array of loving, caring friends and family members at the hospital. Thank you to the many beautiful people there. I wasn’t able to understand all of what Steve said, but I know that he really had wanted to visit Duncan and to hike in Colorado. He spoke of old friends like Alison Arnold, and her brother. And I think he said that music and friends are like an animal with many faces, all of them different, all of them wonderful.
All my heart, Steve, always. I’ll see you in the wilderness beyond.
Ginger Pinholster, class of 1978
July 9th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Always, when I think about Steve, I smile. Except that today I am both smiling and not smiling. His classroom felt like home to me, because it was cozy, with the fractals on the walls and the oscilloscope in the corner, and because it was full of possibilities. He forgave me somewhat for being terrible at math, but not for my “egregious errors,” and let me tag along with the math team on practices and meets, which I loved, because I could imagine the knowledge all around me, and hope that some of it would seep in and become part of me. Well, maybe some of the knowledge came in that way, but definitely the love of numbers that he felt did and was contagious, because it was really love of the world and of learning about the world. I care about math because of Steve Sigur. He said one day that the universe may be made up of only one electron, jumping back and forth through time, something I still try to picture, and to relate to the connectedness of it all. Yes, and the laser/oscilloscope/computer assembly we built during Short Term to create a laser light show! He opened my mind to theoretical universes and practical ones. He even let me borrow his sound courses on video tape, to gain better understanding. The subject was way over my head, but I watched them anyway because I liked to see him explain things. Well, a person cannot be summed up in a paragraph, of course, and what a person means to another equally cannot be. I am sorry that we lost Steve. Although we were not in touch through the years, I feel a hole in me where he is supposed to be.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
While most of the posts on here refer to students’ experiences with Steve in a math class, the thoughts that come to my mind are about basketball (as Erik M. mentioned earlier). Many people do not know that Steve was a stellar basketball player at Brown, competing against some great players such as Bill Bradley. Steve was second in the nation in field goal perccentage in 1967 to none other than Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabaar). Steve had a vast basketball knowledge that few knew about.
Steve – I wish I had asked you more questions about basketball and about your life, you were always so interested in ours.
Thanks-
Jeremy Deason ’95
July 10th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
What can be said about a man who had such an impact on so many students? Were it not for his encouragement and mentoring, I for one would have become just another unemployed English major.
What is clear in reading all these other posts is the common theme. Not only was Steve an amazing and amazingly passionate math teacher (a singularity in itself) but he was a thoughtful, generous and wise person — the kind that is hard to find anywhere in life, much less a classroom.
There was a story that Steve told us that has stayed with me all these years later.
He was talking about one of his adventures in his younger days, hiking across Canada. (Instantly, sixteen-year-old ears perked up: What? You can do that?) One day, as he was walking along the side of a highway, a car pulled over and the driver offered him a lift. Steve, of course, was a larger-than-life lumbering bear of a man; on first impression, not necessarily the kind of person to whom you’d want to offer a ride.
Steve got in, and the driver said, “Do you know why I picked you up?” Steve said no.
The driver said, “I’ve passed by a lot of hitchhikers on the side of the road, just standing there with their thumbs out. You are the only one I’ve seen actually trying to get there on your own.”
That was Steve: an adventurer and explorer. That was what he taught us: Don’t wait for someone else to come along and make your life easier. It is your responsibility — and joy — to make your own journey.
Thank you, Steve.
-Eric
July 11th, 2008 at 1:20 am
Steve.
I can’t even put into words the impact you had on my life. High school was no place for a socially inept nerd like I was, shriveled in my miserable shell. You showered unpretentious, unforced encouragement on me, you spoke with me as if I was worth speaking to, you were my friend instead of my teacher, and you taught me not just the subject of mathematics, but also your philosophy on life, art, music, and how to be a decent human being. Everything about who I am now, 15 years since I last saw you, is due to my parents, and due to you. You are the reason I am comfortable in my own skin, and why I am happy as an adult.
*Hence* I will miss you more than I can say, but I think you know, and I will be eternally grateful to you for helping me to be the person that I am.
Thank you so much for everything,
Your friend Ken
July 12th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Steve was and is incredible, otherworldly. He lives on in every eye-twinkle, every wise remark, every guitar solo, every joyful puzzle, every denial of fashion and fad in favor of depth and content. Steve is what Santa Claus wishes he could be – an immortal spirit of love and giving, and without all the consumerist claptrap.
His style was so unique that I dressed as him for Halloween my senior year, and nearly won the costume contest for my humble imitation of his greatness.
July 14th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I was only at Paideia for less than a year as Paul’s assistant in the high school, but Paideia and its people have stayed with me ever since. Whenever I tell people what a fabulous, wondrous place Paideia is, I always tell them about Steve. The gentlest of giants, a beautiful mind, and a truly singular person. I loved that he came to school dressed in what seemed to be whatever he picked up first that was relatively clean. His brain was way too busy with more important things to worry about holes in the knees of his pants or a shirt not quite long enough to cover his impressive frame.
I was the person who sent out the high school grade sheets at the end of each term, and Steve’s always stood out. They were little 8 1/2″ x 11″ works of art and he asked that I send the originals out to the parents – no gray photocopies would do. If a student had a Steve class, I always arranged their grade sheets with Steve’s on top of the stack when I sent them out — they were that cool.
In an extraordinary place, Steve was an extraordinary person among extraordinary people. I can only share a small part of the grief that belongs to all of the people who loved him, but it was my pleasure and privilege to have known him. Rest easy, big man.
July 15th, 2008 at 9:34 am
In my freshman year I found a group of people to eat lunch with and we all enjoyed each other’s company. When we were forced to move from where we normally hung out together Steve was the one who gave us a new home. We hung out in his classroom every day and he put up with all the goofy stuff we did and made interesting contributions to our conversations. He watched movies with us. When most of the group moved elsewhere to do other things he still kept me company. He posed for my photography project. One of the pictures is at the top of the page. One of my favorite memories of him is the day during my sophmore year when the seniors were doing their scavenger hunt and one of the things they needed was a picture of a nine inch or longer beard. Of course a constant stream of seniors was coming into Steve’s room and he patiently let them all take photos of his beard. I thought that was really funny. He was a really great guy and I’m really going to miss him a lot.
July 15th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
When I got to high school Steve took a very keen and personal interest in my well-being. I was a bit lost and conflicted at that time. As well as being my math teacher (one course consisted of only two students, Michael Matthews and Myself), Steve was also my advisor and he would regularly spend his own lunch period with me. On these days he would buy me lunch and talk with me, offering wise and caring sentiments on my life and on life in general. He was particularly enthusiastic and encouraging about my potential to be a successful and productive person, however I defined that. Regardless of my habit to procrastinate and at times feel as if I was not meeting my potential or Steve’s vision of what I could be, he would, even years after highschool, always remind me that he BELIEVED in me. From basketball to school to family to love, his words of advice have ALWAYS stayed with me and, at times of hardship, buoyed me.
As a typical teenager, sometimes I resisted the guidance and challenges Steve presented me, but as a teacher myself now, looking back, I can only marvel in awe at the EXTRAORDINARY commitment Steve had to helping young people. As Paul B wrote in his dedication, “teaching was Steve’s life”. In his life and work, Steve was tireless. He was constantly working on some project or another and he always had time for anyone who needed his help or just wanted his company.
That was Steve’s involvement in my life. Of course, there was much more to him as a scholar, scientist, teacher, athlete, colleague, brother and son. I believe that in each of these realms, Steve aspired for and achieved a truly UNIQUE excellence that only those who knew him can understand.
Even those of us that did know him will never fully grasp the depth of his life-experiences from his summer adventures in the Yukon to his years as a basketball star on the national stage, and even the fact that his mother suffered from severe mental illness, causing Steve to take on the responsibility of raising himself and his brother from an early age.
The last time I saw Steve was after I heard he was sick. I was in Atlanta and I stopped by Paideia to look for him. In his classroom I found three kids happily fiddling around with the computer equipment that Steve apparently made available to them at all times. They told me I would probably find Steve “under the big tree” enjoying his free period. How fitting that image was for Steve and for Paideia in general! I assumed Steve was having some sort of meditative experience there but when I found him he told me that he got the best reception for his cell-phone under that tree. Ha. We talked about old times and new times and it was a pleasure as always.
He was an icon at Paideia and he can never be replaced.
Thank you, Steve.
Peace be with you.
July 17th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
From 1992 until he left two weeks ago, Steve coached the Georgia American Regions Math League team. This involved finding the 30 or so top high-school math students in the state, training them for a month, and then putting all of them on a bus up to Penn State the first weekend of June.
Steve was heavily involved throughout the entire process. My first introduction to Georgia ARML — most people’s introduction — was Steve taking all the “newbies” at the state math competition into a room and giving a mini-lecture, on geometry or group theory or anything else that interested him, and never failed to interest us as well.
Steve was a source of knowledge and wisdom in the coaching process, too. Although students typically demonstrate solutions to various math problems, if we had one that managed to stump everyone, Steve could often be counted on to know the answer. And if you had a question about geometry, Steve would tell you everything you needed to know — and then some.
On the bus trip, Steve would make a point of sitting with every student and talking to them — no matter how young, no matter how introverted or quiet. On those trips, we discussed everything from Mel Brooks to bridge to quantum mechanics. Those conversations stretched my brain, but they occupied just one small corner of Steve’s store of knowledge.
Steve, Georgia ARML will miss you.
July 25th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
I did not know Steve personally. I was not a student of his nor a colleague. My two children who currently attend Paideia have never had the privilege of taking a class from Steve as they were too young. I do not work at Paidea except on a volunteer level. So you must surely wonder what on earth I would have to contribute to this very sacred site.
I am an oncology nurse who works at the Emory Winship Cancer Center in the infusion area where Steve received his chemo. treatments. Ahh, you might say. But I cannot even claim the right to say that I personally ever cared for him. I have a few wonderful nurse friends who did and I know they were very kind to him. I introduced myself to him as a Paideia parent when he first started coming there, foolishly hoping that he might feel a bit more at ease. That was the only time we ever actually spoke to one another.
You might say I only knew Steve Sigur from afar. I am ashamed to admit that upon first spotting him at Paideia I did not know what to make of him. He was so tall, had such a long beard and
hair with a Paideia cap perched on top and he was dressed for school in sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt. Our family was new to Paideia and although we knew the atmosphere was casual, I could not believe that was approved attire for a teacher! When I saw him in the infusion center my first thought was, “God, I hope people don’t judge him because of the way he looks” and I shocked myself with that horrible thought. I have been taking care of cancer patients for 16 years and I never gave a damn how they looked. I only saw the frail person inside the clothes and wanted to help them as much as I could. But, for the first time, I actually had a previous connection with a patient and this completely floored me.
When you are a nurse, you learn quickly to become numb to your true feelings lest they completely engulf you and make it impossible to carry on. It’s not that we don’t feel; it’s that we feel too much and we simply cannot take that home with us every night – it just stays inside the walls of the familiar institution as part of your “job”. But Steve, a person I never knew, has brought out a sadness I have bottled up for 16 years. And the more I find out about him and what he meant to so many people makes it so much worse. I have thought about him a lot and cried spontaneously on several occasions since his death. No other patient has caused me this much sorrow and I simply cannot explain it.
The last time I spotted Steve from afar was when I was leaving the CVS parking lot in Emory Village right before school let out for the summer. He was seated on the cement step right outside of Shield’s Meat Market enjoying an ice cream bar, the vanilla kind with chocolate coating. He had his backpack on his back, his cap on his head, and he was wearing shorts which surprised me. A piece of the chocolate coating fell off as it often does with those bars when you first bite into them. I just remember he looked like he was simply enjoying one of life’s simple pleasures in a familiar community that must have given him so much joy. And I wept as I drove away.
Steve, I hope you are at peace. I will miss you.
Janet Nizam
July 26th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I first got to know Steve as he rode with Kathy, Charlyn, and I to my first Paideia retreat. After talking with him only a little while, I noticed the kind heart that he had and his willingness to help people. I found it remarkable that someone with such incredible knowledge of math, science, and other things could exhibit such compassion toward his colleagues and students.
As his classroom was next to the Technology Office, Steve would come by just to say “Hi” and chat with us often. One day, he told me about a new barbecue restaurant that he and Carl had discovered called Rolling Bones. He started a Friday lunch tradition of ordering out and bringing in Rolling Bones, a tradition in which our department (and Carl) would often partake.
As my work shifted more toward elementary teaching, I maintained a work space in the Tech Workroom, which was also next to Steve’s classroom. When I would use the work space during my breaks, Steve would often pop his head in and ask “Are you teching or teaching right now?” It meant a lot to me to know that Steve was still interested in what I was doing even though a lot of my work had changed and I wasn’t in his area as often.
Steve was one of the most loyal and helpful Officer Earlybirds that I had during morning carpool. Even after he was diagnosed and started undergoing treatments, he came out to do his shift every morning that he could. One thing that I will always remember is Steve’s application of mathematics to the flow of traffic during carpool. Steve would time the light at Fairview to see how many cars could pass through the light while it was green. He then figured out the likelihood of each traffic light cycle causing a backup and advised me when to start making the cars turn right. His calculations were always on the money.
When news of Steve’s initial diagnosis was released last year, I was befuddled and didn’t know what to think. When he was going to his regular treatments, I was able to give him a ride only once, as afternoon carpool often conflicted with his appointments. I asked him how his diagnosis affected his outlook on life. He said, “Each extra day that I get to live is a gift, and I’m thankful for each day that has been given to me.” What he said really reminded me of the frailty of life, and that each day that we get is a gift. Unfortunately, we don’t often realize this until we are dying. Steve inspired me to appreciate each day that I am alive and to live each day to its fullest.
I think it will really hit me (and maybe others on the faculty) when we come back to school this August and Steve isn’t there. Steve, I cannot imagine Paideia without you. We’ll miss you.
July 27th, 2008 at 11:47 am
We miss you Steve
August 5th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Steve, I still can’t believe you’re gone. I miss you, friend.
August 20th, 2008 at 7:35 am
A rare combination – a towering, gentle man with a large, curious brain; an equally expansive heart; a fierce dedication to and patience with others; a humorous bent; and a strong internal compass that guided his life choices and some of ours.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:43 am
Steve was the first teacher who was able to blast through the fear that had paralyzed my brain when it came to math. He approached and regarded me as a whole person, and I have never forgotten the respect and encouragement he offered. He was a teacher who truly understood how to meet students at their current level, and how to supportively challenge them.
As I read comments from several generations of Paideia students, I appreciate and am grateful that so many had the privilege of experiencing Steve, and his kindness, creativity, and integrity.
August 30th, 2008 at 11:18 am
The last time I saw Steve was in 1989 when I visited Paideia and talked with the community about my experiences living in Hiroshima after leaving Paideia in 1980. Steve and my former student and dear family friend Gerry Landers took me to lunch and explained how Paideia had changed while remaining the same:”love man, the place is still about relationships.” The first time I met Steve he showed up at Paul B and Pauil H’s invitation to play b-ball on Wednesday night under the “lights” on the asphalt b-ball court behind 1509 Ponce. Here was this monster of a guy– long hair and beard (me too but only six feet tall)–wearing army combat boots, untied, with a slide rule in his jeans’ back pocket. And he could play. He could shoot like none of us , except Paul B and Pat Conroy. But it was himself as a learner and teacher. I was teaching half-day and finishing my Ph.D. at Emory and I remember most vividly one day while he was playing a handmade flute on the bench in the wood chip pile outside the high school talking with senior Randy Kinnoman about failure. How had we failed in school and I was talking about taking a physics course my senior year at Princeton HS and how I memorizeed the formulas without understanding in my own mind and Steve lambasted the “new science” because it should of been teaching physics and calculus together (for Steve everthing was interconnected
). That’s where I failed I said. I didn’t take calculus. Steve said every adult ought to go back to high school or college and retake a course they didn’t do well in,they failed, and really get into to it and learn it really well. “Walt”, he said “calculus is about what going on under the slope.” He understood so well that learning and teaching and leading go hand in hand. I miss him and yet I’m always mindful of him. Love ya Steve. Walter
November 30th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
What can be said that has not already been said? Steve was a spacious being, one who (even now) has room for all our myriad impressions of him and more…
I imagine Steve on the soft, bumpy tundra of the northern Yukon, trudging unassumingly through a vastness and beauty that matched his sense of wonder. I picture his steady, loping gait and his eye for the unexpected – constantly open to what could be observed, gathered, and appreciated all around him.
Eventually he would stop – finding a suitable spot near a flowing stream – and cook a pot of rice from his sack, mixing in whatever wild greens he had found along the way, perhaps saving some crowberries for dessert.
As this traveler sat, the endless northern twilight would fill the sky, and the lone soul would absorb the calm and the wildness and the great scale of it all, in silent reverence.
After a score of such twilights, our traveler would become content. He would turn, renewed, toward civilization – determined once again to share his amazement with the rest of us.
This was the Steve I knew, and still know, for he passed to me his feeling of reverential wonder. Or more accurately, he gave me permission to feed my own.
Thank you, Steve. I carry you to every mountaintop.
January 24th, 2009 at 12:23 am
I knew Steve through the Georgia ARML team, which Harrison explained above. Steve seemed to love what he was doing. He had a gift, perhaps unique, of revealing vast ideas in math and physics in brief amounts of time. In a few minutes, he would show us the skeleton of something huge. He would change the way I thought about something. In such brief amounts of time, you can’t give away the entire story, but he gave us enough to follow through on our own. It was beautiful.
He taught me many things—special cases in geometry, the importance of scale, the projective plane as a homogeneous entity, conjugates in triangles, duality of points and lines—but of all these, I think the most sublime was the use of symmetry, which has colored my thinking ever since he showed me what I had been missing. I’m still exploring it.
On the overnight bus trips to the ARML tournament, he would work his way along the aisle, sitting with students and talking with them about topics that interested them—polyhedra, the uncertainty principle as a force. He always cared about the entire team. He was always a positive force in the state math community, as well, promoting new tournaments and events. He encouraged the efforts of all students, the veterans and the young ones.
I think he was a lifelong student himself. I heard that he spent his summers at Princeton, working with the renowned mathematician John Conway. He seemed to be living life to its fullest long before his troubles surfaced. It is tragic that his life was so brutally cut short. He may no longer be with us on earth, but the minds he touched will never be the same again.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 am
Steve was one year ahead of me at Northside and became a great friend. Though we lost touch, I often thought about him. Our political philosophies were and I suppose remained totally opposite, but we had great times discussing the then current events of the day. He was an avid Putt-Putt golfer, and now it is clear how he knew the correct angles to play. He played basketball and I ran track, so we got to complain to each other how tough practices were, though he would never criticize his coach, the legendary Ossie Wadewitz. He was even then the gentle giant I see described in these posts, and it does not surprise that he bacame such a positive influence on so many lives. Rest well, Steve, you certainly deserve it.
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