Steve’s hair turned white early, starting with his beard in his forties. With his white hair, large waistline, and wire rimmed glasses, I told him for years he needed to be Santa. At a Christmas family gathering about 17 years ago, our great-nephew Seth was playing in the living room with his six year old cousin (from the other side of the family); Steve was sitting in a big chair in front of the fireplace wearing a red sweater and a Santa hat and Seth’s cousin said “that’s Santa.” Seth said “no, that’s my Uncle Steve, but I don’t know what he does for a living…” The little guy asked me and I told him I couldn’t say because it was a secret. He asked Steve, who winked and also said he couldn’t say. The little boy asked if he could go back to the North Pole with us that very night — his bags were packed!
More than once during December, Steve would be in a grocery aisle in a red shirt and a child would get excited thinking they had spotted Santa. Steve would go along with it and tell them they “needed to be very good.” So, after years of this, our daughter decided to surprise him with an authentic Santa suit, so he could be Santa to our grandkids. Well of course, Steve loved it and from that moment on he was Santa every December, and every chance he got. He started volunteering for Santa gigs: he was Santa at the Ronald McDonald House a couple of years, the Benton House Santa for their Holiday Bazaar, a neighborhood Christmas party, for students in a Special Ed class at Warren Central, and a couple of east side grade schools. He never took money for his appearances, but some would give him free dinner or a gift certificate for his favorite restaurant, to keep that Santa belly round. He did a few of our granddaughter’s playmate’s Christmas parties too. Our grandchildren told everybody their Papaw was Santa. When anyone argued, other friends would agree, saying “Oh yes he is – I saw him!” Steve loved being Santa and admitted he should have done it much earlier.
With that white hair and beard, I used to be able to get us in to movies with senior discounts. I’m 10 months older, so the first time I did it, I was going to be 55 that year and dropped him at the door of the theater to get the tickets and told him I’d show my ID when I came in, if they asked. They didn’t ask. Next time, we needed to be 60 and they still didn’t ask for ID! So I said, we could have been getting a discount for the last 10 years!
Like most people, there are some special events every year that we wouldn’t miss for the world. One that stands out is the Snow Ball Dance in Shelbyville. Good friends Norma and Virg Dollar invited us for the first time over 30 years ago. I worked with Norma at Ayres. Their son Craig has been in a band (3Gs) for over 40 years, since high school at Holy Name. We are groupies, along with a group of friends, and go to as many gigs as we can, but always the Snow Ball Dance. It’s a fundraiser for St. Joseph Catholic Church. Beef tenderloins are grilled outside, even if it’s snowing, and they serve the best dinner you can imagine. There is always wine tasting, shrimp, cheese and crackers to start and beer kegs the rest of the evening with the dinner. The band plays for 4 hours and the dance floor is packed all evening. (Norma and Virg used to go dancing 4 or 5 nights a week as octogenarians up until a couple years ago!) Steve loved the food and music. The band plays everything from the golden oldies to more recent hits. Several horns are played, which add to the richness. The guys all have had day jobs (engineers, teachers, etc.) but now many are retired. I went recently (it had been postponed until May this year) without Steve and teared up on the dance floor as they played “My Girl.”
Another favorite annual event was 4th of July at Georgia and Jim’s, who live downtown and had a good view of the fireworks. Steve worked with Georgia at the library for years. They would grill hamburgers and everyone would bring a covered dish or something to share. They invited everyone they knew and it was a blast. At sunset, we would gather on the grassy knoll across from their house with a perfect vantage point for the fireworks.
The last 10 years Steve was retired, he filled his time with writing articles (sometimes as many as three a week) for this newspaper, attending board meetings, lots of doctor’s appointments, and watching old movies.
Steve’s Mom Betty lived to be 95 and passed in her sleep in September of 2019. She was still living in her house, even though the last 5 months were in hospice. Steve’s dad had passed in 2004. He was so much like him.
With the pandemic, we hadn’t been doing much. I was still getting a newspaper out every week, wearing a mask. Steve got good at ordering food online from Kroger. Only problem was sometimes he would lay down for a nap and not get up to get the ice cream off the porch. The feral cats in the neighborhood had some nice deli meat treats on his behalf too.
The isolation and lack of exercise didn’t help Steve’s health issues. He got so he could hardly do anything — any exertion caused chest pain. In October of 2020, his heart specialist ordered a heart catheter to make sure the bypasses from 20 years ago were still holding up. The test showed no new blockages and the old bypass was holding up. But his congestive heart failure was getting worse.
Not long after, Steve’s feet started being a real problem. Steve had neuropathy (can’t feel your feet) from diabetes and kidney problems. He was banging up his toes, but not feeling it and I was seeing blood on the bathroom floor. He went to a new podiatrist, who found wounds on toes on both feet. For 3 weeks, I had to change bandages on his feet from toe to ankle every other day and we saw the podiatrist every week. He had flare ups and then they would get better. We bought special diabetic shoes, but with a size 13 foot, he was always bumping into something.
Steve’s sleep habits got worse. He had always been a night owl and I was used to that, but he started sleeping day and night and only getting up every 24 hours. And with sleep apnea, it was never sound sleep. I started going to all of his doctor appointments with him (6 specialists) to make sure he told them what was going on. They would ask and he would say he was fine. I told his doctors about his sleep habits, but no one seemed to be that alarmed. His primary care doctor did schedule another sleep apnea test. When he had first tested positive for sleep apnea 12 years before, he couldn’t stand the C-pap mask. His doctor said she was using one herself, and had gotten the latest kind, which was much more comfortable and insisted he try. But he had to miss that test, because of other health issues, including his feet.
I had to call 911 seven times from February to September of 2021. The first call was when we had that heavy snow. I hadn’t gone into work and was on the phone with my business partner Ethel, when I heard banging on the floor upstairs. I found Steve on the floor flaying and yelling (having a diabetic seizure). The EMTs got his blood sugar under control, after I fed him some scrambled eggs and a sandwich. The EMTs liked his collection of werewolf figurines on a shelf over his bed.
Another time, the emergency call was a kidney stone passing.
Because he was sleeping so much, Steve was losing weight, but his meds hadn’t been adjusted for the smaller Steve. He would never test his blood sugar, so he was taking too much insulin sometimes. He finally got a Freesytle Libre, which reads your blood sugar on a monitor and an alarm goes off if it gets too low. We could finally regulate his insulin.
In October of 2021, one of Steve’s toes became so infected it had to be amputated. It was an outpatient procedure, which probably should never have been done without a hospital stay. At first, he seemed to get along fine. Then that toe became infected and oral medicine wasn’t helping, so he had to go into the hospital. They did more surgery to rid the foot of infection, that left a large wound down the middle of his foot. After 10 days at Methodist hospital, he went to rehab at Arlington Place, where he could get IV antibiotics. He could barely do any of the rehab — he was too weak. He said his therapist was a “cheerful sadist.”
After 20 days in rehab, his kidney numbers were bad, so we had to go back to Methodist. They hooked Steve up to everything — heart monitor, several IVs, oxygen and a catheter. He was miserable and got weaker; he couldn’t feed himself. Doctors put him through every test possible. The heart specialist thought he could fix him, until he found the blood clot in his heart. An ICU doctor told me untreated sleep apnea can cause congestive heart failure (nobody had ever told us that). He was moved four times in the 20 days he was there. My daughter and I took shifts every day feeding him. He could hardly swallow, so it was all soft food. They finally had to start dialysis. On Christmas morning I went to the hospital cafeteria and they were giving away lemon meringue pie (one of his favorites), and he ate a whole piece. An Indian kidney doctor stopped by and I told him Steve had eaten a whole piece of pie and he said “eat pie, eat all the pie you want.” After the doctor left the room, we talked and laughed about the movie “Life of Pi,” about an Indian man’s adventure and life story. Steve’s last meal was a few bites of red velvet cake.
Our daughter’s birthday is 2 days after Christmas, and he survived until the day after that. When the nurses were giving him a sponge bath, he went into cardiac arrest (he had loved those sponge baths) and they were unable to revive him.
We originally scheduled his funeral for New Year’s Day, but we had to postpone it because my sister and I tested positive for Covid. We finally honored him with a celebration of life and a beautiful service on May 1st, the first day of his favorite month in Indy (i.e., he was a big race fan). It was an amazing event, full of wonderful stories from family and friends and beautiful music from his dear friend Goldie Ingram (he had worked on the Bookmobile with her 40 years ago). At the end we had bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace.” Mayor Hogsett even stopped by to pay his respects. Steve always loved a good party.
Next Time: List of Special thanks to those who donated to The Weekly View in Steve’s memory.
