Remembering My Brother

I got a message from my niece yesterday morning (it’s just after midnight on a Tuesday as I write this, so “yesterday” was Monday morning) asking me to call her ASAP. When I called, it was the kind of news I’d suspected but hoped I’d never hear: Her dad, my brother Steve, had collapsed at work and died.

Steve was the reason I got into comic books and science fiction. I have a slew of random memories of him:

Explaining the Legion of Super-Heroes to me. Steve liked to “color-correct” his comics when he was young, so several of them included things like Invisible Kid being lightly colored in (in crayon) when he was using his powers and the colorist hasn’t done it and coloring Light Lass’s hair back to red when in the 1970s colorists started making her a blond. (Obviously, he never did that with the replacements he bought as back issues.)

Using tracing paper and some of his old comics to create custom psuedo-Colorforms to use with my Colorforms sets. It was the first time I’d ever come up with my first super-hero of my own (Superlad, who eventuallky became the character called Paladin in my stories).

Sitting in an old chair in the back yard, playing catch with our brother David, whipping a baseball back and forth at what to my young eyes were nothing but fastballs.

Playing badminton with our brother Kevin, Steve on one side and Kevin and me on the other. We didn’t have a net; we played over the wire fence we had at the time.

Trips to Fantasy World, the first comics shop I can remember in Peoria, and his mail orders of Legion-related back issues from Mile High Comics and the briefcase he kept all those comics in.

Taking Kevin and me to see the Hulk at Bergner’s in a snowstorm. A car slid head-on into us on the way home. Steve’s car, a 1968 Buick LeSabre, was totaled on atechnicality; although there wasn’t much physical damage to the car, the engine block was cracked. (Kind of ironic, because my parents had originally bought that car, used, when I was three years old, which is the earliest memory I have.)

Seeing Star Wars for the first time at the long-gone Rialto Theater in Peoria, sitting in the balcony of a packed house and staring down at the screen.

All the movies he and Dave took Kevin and me to, including two of my three favorite movies of all time, Forbidden Planet and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Steve and Dave would take us to midnight movies like The Time Machine, Night of the Living Dead, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

His massive collection of science fiction novels. It’s through Steve that I learned about Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Rady Bradbury, Keith Laumer, Andre Norton, and others.

Playing frisbee in the front yard with Kevin, Dave, and me, and all the times the frisbee would get caught in the pine trees (and the trees never threw back).

Drawing super-hero logos on plain white t-shirts for Kevin and me to wear while we played outside. They were usually in black and white, but once he did the Composite Superman’s symbol for me in color.

Trips to Co-Op Records (the original one on Main Street and the one on north University). I got a lot of exposure to ’60s and ’70s music through Steve, who made me some mix tapes that lasted through my college years.

The tape of Simon and Garfunkel music he gave me when I was an undergraduate, which I listened to with Dad on the way back to campus once. Turned out Dad liked Simon and Garfunkel, too, because The Graduate was Dad’s favorite movie. Steve created a bonding moment for Dad and me, and he never knew it.

Complaining about the look of the uniforms in Star Trek II, which he thought were too militaristic, and the uniforms in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which he said looked like pajamas. It got me started designing my own version of Star Trek uniforms that eventually become the Starmada (which I’m writing a novel about off and on).

Teaching me a little about drawing when I was about fourteen or fifteen. I practiced for a long time on that, eventually getting pretty good at drawing for a while until my hands started giving me problems.

Helping Steve navigate computers in the mid-1980s when he went back to school to get an associate’s degree in robotics. He had an associate’s in graphic design, but by the time he’d gotten his degree the market was saturated. Steve never actually found a job in the robotics field, either.

Bringing my nephew Nathan over when Nathan was six months old, giving me a chance to meet him after Steve and I hadn’t seen each other for a few years because I was living up in Michigan. Steve did his best to take care of his family, and it was obviously a family full of love.

Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with Steve and his family, with him showing me little things he’d picked up like his Lost in Space miniatures. And how his wife and PJ took to each other right away.

Finding two of the comics Steve hadn’t been able to track down for his collection and sending them to him as a surprise gift.

Seeing him for what turned out to be the last time, on Election Day 2020, at our parents’ house after Dad died. Steve ended up with the house, finally giving him and his family a place they owned while keeping the house in the family.

I think I’m still in shock at the moment. I knew Steve’s health wasn’t great in the past few years, but I don’t think anyone expected this.

Steve’s survived by me (obviously) and our brothers, Dave and Kevin, our sister Cindy, and of course his wife and family (my nephews and niece, and my niece’s husband). Our parents and our sister Bobette preceded him to the afterlife.

Believe me, he’ll be missed.