The first thing I had to do with Steven was almost exactly thirty years ago. In November 1987 I started kindergarten at Walgrove Elementary School. I was a child with Asperger's who did not like doing other little kid activities in class and who preferred to sit on my own at a table and write down mathematical series, much to the dislike of the teacher. She could not understand what I was doing, so she called Marygrace, who was working with district students with special needs. She did not understand the math either, so she showed my work to Steven, who was then a colleague of hers, and he realized that I was essentially doing algebra.


It was not until eleven years later that I finally met Steven. At that time I was at Venice High School and Marygrace was still working with me. Venice was not a place where I was able to make any good friends and I kept telling Marygrace that I want to transfer out of that school. She did not think it was a good idea, but she did know of someone who could be my friend, and that was Steven's daughter and her stepdaughter Marianne. Even though I was 16 and she was 23, we became good friends, much better friends than I was with anyone at Venice at that time. 

Marianne has remained a good friend of mine ever since then and someone whom I regularly would go to visit along with Grace and Steven. When they were my neighbors in Westchester, I would still go and visit them all the time and come to their various events. It has become a bit more difficult ever since they moved to Laguna Woods and I moved in the other direction, but I have still mamaged to see them and Marianne every so often. The last time I saw them was this past March and Steven, despite being 80, still appeared to be in a good shape. He always appeared younger than he really was, in my opinion. Then in June Grace told me that he has Alzheimer's and about his mood changes. Even though he would no longer be the same, I still thought he would last longer than he did and I could not believe he was gone so soon.