Remembering Uncle Steve 1944-2005

Just wanted to post a little remembrance of my Uncle Steve. (Here’s a photo with his daughter, Marlena, at her wedding.) His name was really Marvin Stephen Lorensen but since there was already a Marvin in the family, my grandmother’s brother Marvin, Marvin Stephen became just plain Steve. My mom was the oldest of 7 children, Paula, Steve, Spike, Kathy, Juanito, Dana and Ronnie. I think she always thought of Steve as her little brother, which I guess he was. We, my mom’s kids, were pretty close in age to her younger brothers and sisters., (Ronnie is only a year older than me and he’s a year younger than my brother Eddie.) as a result we were closer

to the younger ones, than to the older, but for some reason Steve was
always my favorite uncle. I have only a few special memories of him. He
had been in Vietnam as a civilian contractor, as I recall my uncle
Spike was there at the same time, though in the army. Steve finally
returned home and came to visit us riding on a Harley Davidson. I was
probably in 5th or 6th grade at the time. He took me for a ride on the
highway. I remember holding on for dear life, and he kept telling me
don’t hold on so tight. For years after I’d regale my friends with
stories about my uncle with the Harley and how he’d taken me for a
ride. Once, Steve had bought a brand new color T.V., (This was in the 60s
and in our neck of the woods color T.V. was still not common.) and he
invited us over to watch The Magnificent Seven
on his new T.V. He pulled out a magnifying glass to show us that the
screen really consisted of red, green, and blue dots. In his youth
Steve was quite an archer. He competed in archery and was apparently
quite good at it. (There’s even a reference to a Steve Lorensen competing at an archery club in San Diego last year, here. I wonder if that was him? Update: My mom says it was.)
One Christmas my parents bought the three of us bows. We rushed out to
use them but they didn’t seem to be working right because the bows
didn’t seem particularly strong and the strings kept hitting us in the
arm. So my parents called up Steve and asked him over. It turned out
that we had strung the bows backwards. The bows were a lot harder to
string the right way. Steve showed us how to string the bows, how to aim and shoot and how to set up a
target on some hay bales. He showed us how to use the arm guards to keep the
bowstring from whacking us. He later brought over one of his old bows
for us to use. That was my Uncle Steve.