Thwack! . . . Thwack! . . . Thwack! Steven Arthur Mills slapped
marble desk in front of Roseville High School’s science class with a yardstick. All eyes suddenly fastened on him. He sensed that we were getting bored with learning, and he wasn’t about to let that happen. Black-framed glasses highlighted my uncle’s hearty face. Wispy white hair topped his head. He was mild-mannered and excessively polite, but when teaching, he was a wild-eyed scientist, a natural showman, who taught in dramatic fashion with experiments, explosions, and flair.
It was a thrill to be in his class. We watched in awe when Uncle Steve dropped potassium in a glass of water. It ignited and skipped in circles over water’s surface. We sculpted glass with Bunsen burners. He taught us chemical equations by blowing up hydrogen – poof! And everything was always done under conditions of extreme safety. We saw fascinating sides of physics with pendulums, levers, and lenses.
But Steven Arthur Mills didn’t limit his teaching to classroom. Some of my earliest memories from childhood are of my Uncle Steve teaching me new things at family gatherings. Uncle Steve was answer man.
“Why is ice hard?”
“Why is toilet bowl cleaner poisonous?”
“Why does ammonia smell so strong?”
His answers were always patient, logical, and scientific, and as a kid, I asked a million questions, because he talked to me like I was an adult. Uncle Steve would pull out a slide rule (this was 1960s, before calculators were common) and help me do math problems in middle of Thanksgiving dinner. We had these “conferences” at every family activity. Once, before arriving at a family event, my dad pulled me aside and said, “Don’t bother Uncle Steve whole time. Other people want to talk to him too.” I was shocked and hurt. To be cut off from Uncle Steve was a crisis.
I found Uncle Steve and pulled on his pant’s leg. “Can I ask you lots of questions?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “I don’t know much, but I’ll tell you what I know,” he said humbly.
Thank God! I felt like an important person when I was around Uncle Steve. Uncle Steve would bring my brothers, my sister, and our cousins, all sorts of educational toys.
“What are you doing, giving a little kid that age a radio kit,” I once heard one of adults ask him, thinking such toys were too advanced for our years.
But Uncle Steve was right. His gifts inspired us to do things beyond all expectations. Once one kid built something difficult, like soldering a walkie-talkie together, everyone tried to do same. He never challenged us to master difficult things; he simply let curiosity take its course. He let us discover how great learning can be.
By time I got to high school we whipped through Newton and Einstein. Uncle Steve gave everyone Periodic Table of Elements and showed us tricks about how to use it. I loved science and math, because Uncle Steve introduced us to concepts and experiments that intrigued us. Importantly, my class left high school prepared for college.
While I was away in medical school, Uncle Steve was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was given estrogen therapy and died suddenly from a heart attack at age 73. We had agreed for several years that he would attend my graduation and he missed it, by only three months.
His death was devastating for me. I might never have gone to medical school if not for his influence. The worst blow was that I came realize his treatment for prostate cancer had probably killed him. He was given estrogen for his prostate cancer, and today we know that estrogen in high doses given back then often causes heart attacks, and my Uncle Steve suffered a sudden, massive one. Years passed and four of my five siblings got married giving me a brother-in-law and three new sisters-in-law. Seemingly overnight, my older brothers fathered five children, and my sister bore five, for a total of ten youngsters with ten new personalities.
Being an uncle to five girls and five boys was something I was unprepared for because I was single. Did I have a role to play in lives of my nieces and nephews? Suddenly, I had questions without answers and didn’t know how to behave. It’s difficult to call on telephone. Who has time during internship and residency? And it’s so hard to call at right time to a family with little kids who are napping or going to bed early.
To my surprise, I discovered a way to reach out to my nieces and nephews. I often received free promotional knick-knacks at work whether I wanted them or not. When given a free gadget, I promptly shipped it to niece or nephew. I sent them pens, penlights, magnets, popping buttons, cheap watches, postcards, and other thingamabobs. Because closest kids lived over 200 miles away from me, mail was often only way for me to make my existence known to them.
What excited responses I got! Several times I received calls from children giggling with delight and thanking me for gifts that I sent them. Several times I got a call from an amazed brother, or my sister, who couldn’t believe how much fun one of children was having with a flashlight or some other object. Mailing stuff reminded me of how Uncle Steve always gave us science toys when I was a kid. Their reactions meant a lot to me, but I came up with other ideas too.
In fact, as time went by, my favorite duty became teaching vocabulary.
“Uncle Brad, you’re sesquipedalian!” Laurel shouted into phone one day when we talked. My six-year-old niece had stumped me with that word. I was totally surprised by it. I marveled at how fast blonde-haired Laurel, oldest of children, was learning.
“It means you like to use big words,” she informed me.
“Oh,” I replied, smiling.
Big words are my hobby. I started trying to expand my vocabulary after being hit by a drunk driver. After being unconscious, I felt mentally cloudy and learning new words was part of my rehabilitation. I unabashedly used newly learned words around my family. I always made sure that I had some big words ready when I was visiting my nieces or nephews.
One summer entire family was visiting grandma and grandpa’s house. All children were there, and I was ready for my performance.
“Unbelievable,” I cried out, “There’s a rampike in yard!” I like to make a big, dramatic, production out of everything educational like my Uncle Steve used to do. “Look, there it is—the rampike—right outside our window!”
