On woodworking, being raised without a dad, and grandparenthood as a renaissance
Interview with Steven Steiner
In the lead up to Father’s Day this Sunday, I had the total joy of interviewing my dad Steven Steiner. My dad is an artist in his own right, with beautiful creations like those pictured below regularly coming out of his garage. In this interview, he talks about his self-taught start in woodworking, being raised by his mom after his dad died at age six, and his pride in our family and his career as an elementary school teacher. At the end, he shares about his relationship with grandparenthood and what he hopes Noa says about him later in life.
Q. Do you mind sharing your age? How would you characterize this phase of your life versus earlier phases?
I’m 74 in a month. In many ways this time has just been truly joyous, relaxing, with so much to do and lots of choices every day. There’s lots of time to read, talk things through, work on projects, work out, and talk to friends. So it’s just been a wonderful, fun time.
Q. More fun than other phases?
Just really different. When you were growing up, we had the joys of bringing up kids and having you go to school and be involved in music and plays and activities. It was a different kind of fulfilling. We always had a happy family, I think. Not a lot of anger or fighting.
It’s little harder being older; your body is a little creakier. But everything about what your mom and I are able to do and share is just fun. I can read for an hour, take a nap, take a walk, talk on the phone. As long as we are healthy.
Q. Tell me about who you were as an elementary schooler.
I was very happy. I enjoyed everything we did in school. I gladly participated. I fit in with most any group or activity, on the playground, in the gym, in the classroom. I was never ostracized or left out. I didn’t realize how rare maybe that is, when you talk to other people.
Q. Why do you think that was?
My attitude and aptitude were conducive to school. I was an average kid. I wasn’t a class clown; I wasn’t talkative; I didn’t raise my hand a huge amount or participate. I just enjoyed learning. I loved going to school and being at school. I can’t remember a day that I didn't want to be there.
Q. Did your parents foster that or was it just in you?
I think my mom to some extent, but we didn’t really get into academic stuff. There were three kids and my mom, so she wasn’t sitting there doing homework with us or anything. She did all the shopping, all the cooking, all the cleaning, all the organizing.
We lived on social security. Each kid got $83 a month in social security after my dad died, so we lived on that. My dad had taken out a $10,000 life-insurance policy two days before he died, which paid off the house, so we owned the house free and clear. That allowed us to live, with social security. We didn’t have family nearby—nobody really except friends, neighbors, and the church.
Q. Was that part of the reason you moved from Iowa to Colorado Springs?
We moved out here in 1960, and that meant we could be closer to Merritt and Della. Merritt was really my mom’s cousin I think, but he got abandoned by his family, so my mom’s parents took him in. He became like a younger brother to my mom.
Mom had lived out here for two to three years after the war and liked it, and she thought it would be a good thing to come out. Merritt and Della got her engaged socially. They introduced her to Harold, who she then ended up marrying.
Q. Who were you as a teenager?
I was quiet. I was clever and funny with my little circle of friends, but other people thought I was really shy. I had a lot of people say that later on in high school; I would just walk by.
I remember in sixth grade, my mom told me I had done the best of anyone in the school in the last three or four years on standardized tests. I knew I was bright after that; I didn’t really have that perception before. When I got to ninth grade, the first quarter I got four Bs and a C, and by the semester I got four As and a B. Somebody got it in my mind that my grades were going on my transcript. So for the rest of high school, I got pretty much straight As.
Sports was a big focus. I could watch or listen to any sport. I didn’t care what sport it was. The Wide World of Sports had a weekly sports show every Saturday night. They would have cliff diving, bowling; I liked to watch anything. When I was a little kid, I would listen to football and basketball on the radio. I would crawl under the table to listen, and I was just crazed; if the games were close, I went nuts. In middle school, I’d have Harold drive me up to the high school to watch basketball and football games by myself. I knew all the players’ names.
Q. If you could tell your 10-year-old self something today, what would it be?
I would be more adventurous outside my circle of friends. I didn’t go join anything. We didn’t have any money, and my mom was raising us by herself, so there wasn’t the ways or means for us to get carted around to anything.
Q. What about your teenage self?
I would take more chances and get more involved in a wider variety of activities. I wish endlessly that I would have played a musical instrument. Joined clubs. Tried different sports. Gotten into a play. I was just caught up in my little circle and reluctant to do things I didn’t know about.
Q. What are you most proud of in life?
My wife, my children, and the family that we built together are my pride and joy and my greatest accomplishment. Period.
My 22-year career as an elementary school teacher is a source of much pride. I always felt that I was making an important contribution to our society and serving as a much-needed male role model. There was much joy in interacting with the kids!
I also seem to have an intuitive ability to design, engineer, and build things out of wood. And I love it! I had no training or apprenticeship or mentor. I built chairs 50 years ago with only a table saw. I have built cabinets, tables, stools, patio covers, and screened-in porches in addition to many decks and fences. This gives me great joy even today. I taught myself how to do these things.
Q. When did you start teaching yourself?
As soon as I was old enough to find tools. Mom had a box of grandpa’s old tools. She said, “That was your grandfather’s knife,” and I immediately took it and started playing with it, and I cut myself in two spots on my hand.
When my dad died, I painted the picnic table outside by myself. Mom was just amazed that I was so conscientious. I could do even the underside of it by myself.
Q. Tell me about the most significant relationship you’ve had with someone older than you.
Really it was just my mom. My mom was my mom and my dad.
We had friends whose fathers I liked, but the parents didn’t engage with the kids. They’d say, “You kids just go play something.” My mom was my role model and my guiding light. My dad died just before my sixth birthday, and my mom courageously gave my two sisters and I a grounded, moral, loving upbringing. I didn’t have grandparents. I didn’t have any teacher mentor that I ever got to know. She was everything to me.
Q. What did you learn from your mom?
To be honest and moral and true to myself.
Q. Through her way of being?
Yes, and she read Bible lessons a lot of mornings. The lesson was really just live right, be honest, be fair, don’t cheat. You have to live with yourself, and you have to live with me.
The crux of my life was not to lose her trust or disappoint her. I can’t imagine anybody could have done a better job than mom did with three little kids.
When we took a trip back to Iowa where we were all born 15-20 years ago, I told both my sisters, “It seemed like mom really liked me the best.” And they both said, “No, she really liked me the best.” That says a lot, that all three of us felt like we were singled out as the special one.
Q. What has your relationship with grandparenthood been?
Well that makes me laugh. Grandparenthood has been a joyful renaissance for Jeanne and me. It’s such a joy to see Noa blossom and become a talkative, delightful, amazing person. She expands so much every time we see her. It’s just fascinating to listen to her think and talk and process and engage in things.
It’s so fun that she’s such a huggy, affectionate person, who brings us all together. She fulfills everything I could have hoped for and more.
Q. How would you like Noa to describe your relationship later in life?
Hopefully, 20-30 years from now when we will be gone, Noa will say, “Grandpa really truly loved me as I am. He was good to me. We read together and built lots of fun things together.”
lovely tribute to your dad!