My favorite memories of my Uncle David come from the many evenings spent playing games around my grandmother’s kitchen table on holidays. He always made things entertaining with his witty remarks and sense of humor. He was extremely intelligent and knew how to have a good time as well. (He also hated to lose at any game!) There was never a dull evening with him around. 

It should be noted that David was a talented musician with good fundamental music training and solid skills as a performer on trumpet and guitar. During his early elementary school years, David took private piano lessons as had I and our brother Mark. From this David learned both the basics of music theory and the discipline needed to be a good performer. But he was not really interested in playing the piano. Instead, in his upper elementary school years he turned to the trumpet and played it throughout his Junior high and high school years. David was not fond of playing in the high school marching band but enjoyed playing in other school ensembles and especially in the pit orchestras for high school musicals. As far as I know, he did not continue to play his trumpet after high school except for his own enjoyment. 
It was in high school that David began to teach himself to play electric guitar. In so doing, he could have been like so many other high school boys who were caught up in the dream to be a sexy guitar hero. However, unlike so many of those boys who would give up playing for lack of perseverance or talent, David continued practicing on his guitar and continued to get better. By his late twenties, David had earned a place in Ben Hamper’s grunge band (see elsewhere). Hamper, a singer in the band and a rock music critic with his own weekly radio show in Flint, thought very highly of David’s guitar playing.  


Andy Warhol is purported to have said that we would all be world famous for 15 minutes at some point in our lives, and David achieved that, almost to the second, when he appeared on the NBC Today Show on November 12, 1986. He was there at the behest of Ben Hamper who had been invited to the Today Show to talk about his Mother Jones column, “Impressions of a Rivethead,” which vividly described the dysfunctional culture of auto assembly line workers. At the time, Ben and David were best friends both working on the assembly line at the GM truck plant on Van Slyke Road in Flint. NBC had sent a crew to Flint to film a day in the life of Ben Hamper and his fellow workers to be featured during the segment. David is shown on the assembly line, relaxing after work at Mark’s bar with Ben and friends, and playing guitar with Ben singing during a performance of their grunge band at Mark’s bar. Following this footage, Ben and David are interviewed live by Jane Pauley as they talk about the opera they are writing about working on the line. They described it as a shop opera, to be titled: “Shopera.” Unfortunately, Shopera never came to fruition.

David graduated college with a degree in communications (MSU ’76) with the romantic notion that he would write and produce films and documentaries on the “real” America. To that end, he bought an old “bucket of bolts” oil-leaking car (paid $25), filled its trunk with fresh cans of oil, packed his duffle bag, invited along his current girlfriend, and headed toward Chicago to pick up Route 66 to LA. Like Jack Kerouac and Hunter Thompson, he was going to live the life and write about it. 
Nothing was heard from David until our parents received a call in the night from somewhere in Kansas. Apparently, David was stopped for speeding and his girlfriend, saying something untoward to the police officer issuing them a citation, got them hauled into the local jail. David desperately needed money to get out of this unfortunate situation. His girlfriend had already paid her fine and left him there while she returned to Michigan.
David continued on to California alone. While crossing the Mojave Desert, his excuse-for-a-car overheated and the battery went dead. He spent hours in the scorching heat trying to flag down someone who could help. Help fortunately did come in the nick of time, and he survived to spend a few days cruising around southern California. When he returned to Michigan, David stayed with our parents. One day his “girlfriend” (yes, that one) showed up, telling him that he owed it to her to take care of her big black dog while she was out of town. David accepted the responsibility not knowing that the dog was pregnant with eight puppies and the “girlfriend” never intended to return for it. The eight puppies were eventually born at our parents’ house, and David ended up tending to them until real homes could be found.


David was a precocious little kid. He could read and write before kindergarten. An eye exam to start school revealed severe nearsightedness. As a kindergartener wearing glasses, he looked the part of the studious little genius. In second grade, David’s teacher sent my parents a note attached to the results of his standardized reading test. It said: “Help, what do I do with this kid?” The test results showed David, at 7, read at a high school level. Soon, private schools for gifted students were discussed, but David would have none of that.
In time, David discovered my Weekly Reader Book Club books. These took me weeks to read back in fourth grade. David, now 8, blew through each in one two hour sitting. After finishing each one, I quizzed him on the content to make sure he wasn’t bluffing. He could always answer my questions in remarkable detail.
School seemed to come very easily for David, and he never seemed to be intellectually challenged. He rarely studied, so he didn’t always earn top grades. In high school, he determined to settle the conflict between his grades and his knowledge, so he took the test for Mensa, the so-called “genius society” which required members to be in the top 2% in IQ. He passed and joined. After attending a few Mensa meetings, David decided that it was too pretentious for him.


OBITUARY

David Walter Steel

December 2, 1953 – December 1, 2021

Elton Black & Son Funeral Home

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