Stephen is the second child in a family of eight children. At this time he is the only one with blond hair. I think he did this so he wouldn't get lost in the crowd. Stephen brings a lot of humor into our family and has taught me that each child was sent to our home with the perfect personality for his/her "position" in the family.
When Stephen was about a month old we moved from southern California to Dayton, Oregon to temporarily live with grandparents. His father was in the marine Corps and had received orders to go to Okinawa, Japan. We were staying at Grandma's house until Dad could bring us over with him. During that time, Stephen was a very serious baby and was very hard to comfort. Many nights I would walk up and down main street by Grandma's house cradling him in my arms because the open air seemed to be the only thing that would calm him down. It was also extremely hard work to get him to crack a smile. I remember practically pitting on a circus for that boy - funny faces and silly games that have always made all of my other babies giggle uncontrollably. However, Stephens reaction would be to glance at me with a bored expression and look in his eyes that said, "And so, what's the point?"
~By Diane Whitehead (Stephen's Mom)
Stephen's big brother is Christopher. As a first child Christopher was very time consuming, expecting his parents to entertain him at all times. With the arrival of Stephen this all changed (thank goodness). Stephen became Christopher's best friend. I have fond memories of Stephen and Christopher doing many amusing things together. When Stephen was around six months old (and Christopher was less than two years old) we saw the Disney movie Pinocchio as a family. Throughout the ensuing months, Christopher would invite Stephen to sit with him and stare at a cement wall to pretend they were watching Pinocchio together. Christopher would give a play by play account of the movie while Stephen obediently watched the blank wall.
~By Diane Whitehead (Stephen's Mom)
I also remember Christopher teaching Stephen how to swim. We lived in Okinawa, Japan and had a "kiddy" pool on the back porch of our second story apartment. Stephen was just learning how to crawl. To say that Stephen was chubby is quite and understatement. Stephen could not get his belly over the plastic, air filled wall of the pool. Christopher pushed and pulled while Stephen just took it with a grunt here and there. Eventually, Stephen went "splat" into the shallow water. With a sigh of relief Christopher proclaimed loudly, ""Mommy, teaching how to swim is hard work!"
~By Diane Whitehead (Stephen's Mom)
Stephen has sometimes had strange ways of interpreting information. When Stephen was in Jr. Kindergarten (an experimental Pre-kindergarten class in Quantico, virginia) all of the little children were to draw a picture of their favorite animal and then have the teacher write down their reason for choosing this animal. Stephen drew a very nice picture of a a large, black snake. The words beside it said, "I like snakes because their poison kills people." My husband and I were first introduced to this picture as we made our tour through open house. We then understood why the teacher looked upon us with such apprehension.
Note of Explanation: We had recently watch several "wildlife" shows depicting many different kinds of snakes. Stephen's father was very fascinated with the information about poisonous snakes. In addition to that, during some previous Marine Corps maneuvers, he'd had a face to face encounter with a poisonous snake and had barely escaped injury. Stephen was not only fascinated about snakes but about his fathers reaction to them.
~By Diane Whitehead (Stephen's Mom)
When Stephen was in 2nd grade we made our move to Aloha/Beaverton. His cub scout pack was having a talent show. Although he was the new kid he volunteered to do some magic tricks. He surprised everyone by actually doing the tricks in a professional manner and brought fun and laughter into the act when he included the cub without prior planning.
~By Diane Whitehead (Stephen's Mom)
Something about Stephen that really impresses me is the way he can figure things out. When we lived in North Carolina there was a large tree that Stephen wanted to climb. Because he was only in first grade he was not tall enough to reach the lowest branch. After standing on chairs and other such items that didn't work; he decided to build and elevator. The amazing thing about all of this is that he really did! The final elevator had a wooden platform attached to a pulley "system." by pulling on a rope he was able to lift the platform high enough to get the lowest branch. He had a lot of fun climbing that tree.
~By Diane Whitehead (Stephen's Mom)
Another thing Stephen made that took some ingenuity was a gravity powered go-cart. In Aloha/Beaverton we lived in a cul-de-sac on a hill. Stephen was always spending a lot of time in the garage making loud hammering/drilling/grinding noises. One day I could hear the children having more fun than usual. i went to investigate. Stephen had build a real go-cart out of wood scraps and old lawnmower wheels. It was quite a hit He spent many hours giving his little brothers and sisters rids on it.
~By Diane Whitehead (Stephen's Mom)
Stephen has always been quite daring. Over the years he has mastered various stunts on bikes, skates and snowboards. He loves the ocean and someday hopes to master surfing. When climbing trees he is the one that can climb the highest without much effort at all. His scout leaders are always commenting on his "fearlessness." i won't go into details but lets just say it has something to do with fire! Thank goodness Stephen is also ALWAYS safety conscious. (Right, Stephen?)
~By Diane Whitehead (Stephen's Mom)
Now that Stephen lives in this "boring, " little town we call Dayton, he has plenty of time to learn about electronics. He recently received an "Outstanding" blue ribbon on his science fair project about logic gates. (Computer stuff._ he also has to slave away making creative movies with little Lego men. I don't know how he bears it, but I get a lot of pleasure out of watching him accomplish so much with so little.
~By Diane Whitehead (Stephen's Mom)
On a more serious note, I want to say that Stephen is a valuable member of our family in so many ways. He does have a lot of intellectual talents but he is strong in the areas of compassion and service as well. Since Joshua ( the baby) was very little, Stephen was the one that Joshua chose to take over for Daddy when he had to travel and could not be home at night to rock Joshua to sleep. After eating, Joshua would look around for Stephen and demand that Stephen hold him. (At this point, Joshua did not even want Mommy.) And when Rachel would throw a "terrible twos" tantrum, Stephen would often be the one to cleverly distract her and make her happy -which is almost an impossible thing to do.
Stephen is there to help Michael through cub scouts; wrestle with Nicholas; discuss junior high expectations with Rebeca; walk Michelle safely from softball practice; and listen to Christopher. He know how to joke around with dad; and is someone Mom can depend on. Thank you, Stephen, for coming to our house and being a part of our family.
~By Diane Whitehead (Stephen's Mom)
One morning when we lived on Camp LeJeune in North Carolina I was awakened at around 2:00 AM by the sound of music coming from another room. As I got out of bed and walked into the hallway, I realized someone’s alarm had gone off and music was playing. The song that was soothingly drifting down the hallway was a beautiful rendition of Born Free by Andy Williams.As I turned the corner and looked into the room of my boys, I saw Stephen lying on the top bunk, with his arms folded underneath his head and he looked at me. He was just laying there soaking in the beautiful melody of that song. While we lived in that house we had watched the movie “Born Free” and the story of the survival of the Lion cub Elsa and her eventual successful returning to the wild had a deep impression on Stephen.
I reached to turn it off and then realized that we both enjoyed this and so we stayed there and basked in the beauty of that melody and the power of the words. While standing there Stephen, who was about 5 at the time said: “It’s beautiful.” He always appreciated the beauty of many things like good music, a touching story, and the freedom of soul. Here are the words to the song:
Born free, as free as the wind blows
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow your heart
Live free and beauty surrounds you
The world still astounds you
Each time you look at a star
Stay free, where no walls divide you
You're free as the roaring tide
So there's no need to hide
Born free, and life is worth living
But only worth living
'cause you're born free
(Stay free, where no walls divide you)
You're free as the roaring tide
So there's no need to hide
Born free, and life is worth living
But only worth living
'cause you're born free
A Youtube version of the melody
~By Gordon Whitehead (Stephen's Dad)
I always saw Stephen as the guy who could get any girl he wanted. I feel the need to clarify however that he was not in any way a womanizer and always treated girls with respect and never used them(like most guys in high school will do). He was always doing something cool to impress the ladies, like playing his guitar or serenading girls from a balcony. When I was in a planning meeting for a boy scout high adventure I was able to hear of yet another story of Stephen being a complete stud. One of the troop leaders at the planning meeting had also been one of Stephens troop leaders when Stephen was a boy scout. The leader told me about how the boys in Stephen's troop were given a missionary assignment to hand out a pass-along card to someone, and introduce them to the church before the camp out was over. Stephen didn't hesitate and found a boatload of cute girls, gave them the card and then got in the boat with them to hang out. He ended up getting a bunch of phone numbers too. The leader then told me that Stephen was from then on a legend among the boys and leaders in the troop for showing such courage.
~By Michael Whitehead (Stephen's younger brother)
Stephen was the one who taught me how to snowboard. I think that is one of the reasons why I love to snowboard so much. I feel a special connection to him whenever I go, and I am always reminded of the awesome times we had on the mountain. However snowboarding was a rare occasion because of the expense and the out of the way location of the mountain. We lived in Dayton Oregon at the time and the closest mountain was about four hours away. Well it was only two hours when Stephen drove. So because the mountain was so far away going snowboarding was an all day thing. There were certain rules when going snowboarding with Stephen. For example he wouldn't go for half a day because it wasn't worth the long drive. You could never go into the lodge to eat or go to the bathroom because any time wasted in the lodge could have been better spent snowboarding. So we would wake up at 5:00 am and would stay until the lift operators wouldn't let us on the lift anymore. We always had our lunches in our backpacks and ate on the lift, to save time for more snowboarding. I was in grade school and just learning when I had an unusual snowboarding experiance. One run we got stuck behind a ski class and it was pretty big so they took up the entire trail which had bottlenecked. They kept having to stop to take instruction from their teacher, and Stephen was getting pretty annoyed. So we went off the side of the trail and jumped the rope to where there was no trail. We were going for a while when we came up on this big hole in the snow with a small river running underneath it. Stephen went along beside it and I followed him but I went a little closer to the hole then he did and I fell in. The river was a few feet deep and I got soaked. The wall of the hole itself was about five to six feet tall. I couldn't climb out so Stephen had to pull me up out of it. I was wet and shaking because of the cold. Stephen had me take off my clothes and he rung the water out of them then he gave me a dry shirt of his to wear as my bottom layer. I put on the rest of my cold wet clothes. Then he rung out my gloves and gave me his, while he wore mine. He said that he was going to warm them up for me. I was wanting so bad to go back into the lodge to warm up I didn't even feel like going snowboarding anymore. Stephen just said that I needed to get moving again so I could get warm. He was reluctant to go back to the lodge and he made a deal with me that I would go down a few more runs, and if I didn't get warm then he would let me go in the lodge. Stephen made sure to go down runs that required a lot of work to make sure that I warmed up. Even though at the time I thought Stephen was crazy I look back on that experience now and it is one of my most treasured memories. Now I feel a sense of pride for being able to tough it out on those long days with Stephen. To this day it is very hard for me to go into the lodge.
~By Michael Whitehead (Stephen's younger brother)
When we lived in Canby Oregon there was a week long camp out at camp Meriwether. It was a combined camp out with both wards and an age group of twelve to eighteen. We were the only scout troops that were there. I had just turned twelve and Stephen was eighteen. Before we left Stephen gave me a warning about how if I didn't want to get picked on like the rest of the twelve year olds then I needed to not act like one. He said as long as I act mature like the older guys then he would protect me from the pranks and other things that the older kids would do to the younger ones. He also said that if I was annoying then he would have no problem letting other people pull pranks on me and mess with me. Being Stephen's little brother I knew henever made idle threats so I did my best to behave. Stephen spent most of the days sleeping and most of the nights out doing... Well I still don't know exactly what he was doing, but I can imagine that it must have been pretty fun. One day however he was awake by noon which was unusually early. He was asking the leaders if there was any canoes or rowboats down by the lake. The leaders told him that they were probably all locked up in the shed. None of the kids wanted to go swimming because the lake was known for being extremely cold. So Stephen took it as a personal challenge to go down to see if he could get a boat out of the shed. He said he wasn't going to go swimming though. All the other kids were interested by this and followed him down to the lake. It turned out that the shed was unlocked, but even then all the other kids were pretty cautious about taking out the boats for fear of getting into trouble. Stephen and another kid just walked straight in and pulled out a canoe. After that everyone else pulled out their own canoes and we just started fooling around in the water. One of the Camp Staff members came down and saw us, but he said that it was ok as long as we put the boats back. In my opinion I thought that day was the most eventful and the most fun. Many of Stephen's scout leaders have told me that Stephen was always fun to go camping with, and that he was always getting something started that made the the camp out memorable, and I would have to agree.
~By Michael Whitehead (Stephen's younger brother)
Living in Oregon our family has always been conservation minded and tried to always recycle. Recycling was one of the chores of the kids that got rotated on a job chart. It was my turn to do the recycling job for that month. The city of Dayton is pretty small and so we had to load up a wagon and walk a couple of blocks to were the recycling bins were. It was a pretty simple and easy job. One day there was a lot of recycling and Stephen was helping me to carry it all. I was in third grade at the time. There was a kid that was about Stephens age who was a pretty big bully. He would always pick on kids as they were walking home from school. He picked on me physically quite a few times and was constantly harassing me, calling me dirty names, and taking cheap shots at the Mormon religion. That is why Stephen was helping me with the recycling, because he was there to protect me. As Stephen and I was walking to the recycling center the kid came riding up on his bike and started to harass us verbally. Sometimes he would attempt to ram into the wagon with his bike. Stephen just ignored him and told me to do the same. The kid followed us all the way to the recycling center which was in a gravel parking lot behind the high school. The kid started throwing rocks at us but we still just ignored him. He hit us a few times but for the most part he had really bad aim. We finished unloading the recycling, then the kid threw a rock that hit me about right next to my eye. I remember bending over covering my eye in pain, then when I looked up Stephen had grabbed the kid by the shirt and threw him up against the chain linked fence. Stephen yelled at him saying how stupid he was that he could have made me blind, and then told him to never again pick on me or anyone else in our family. Even though the kid was almost twice as bulky as Stephen he had a look of terror from the words that Stephen was saying. I remember being amazed at Stephens strength, watching the kids legs dangle, elevated off of the ground. The kid left me alone from then on and was scared to say anything to me after that. Stephen was always defending the people who were being picked on. I never really thought that I had many friends growing up, but at that moment I knew that Stephen was there for me no matter how annoying I was or how mad I made him. Stephen stood up for me many times after that and in many ways, defending me from different bullies metaphorically speaking. I can't say that many people have done for me what Stephen has done. Even though I've needed someone to stand up for me in many instances, not many have had Stephens courage, strength, or genuine care for me. I will forever be grateful to Stephen for what he did for me and the many lessons that I learned from him on that day.
~By Michael Whitehead (Stephen's younger brother)
When I finally got into high school I heard of the legend of the mysterious hero that almost got school cancelled for a day. When I was a freshmen I was talking to one of the seniors who was remanescing about that one day that somebody almost saved the day from the evil school administrators. I just sat back and listened, smiling on the inside, because I knew that the legend that the senior was talking about was my brother Stephen. What had happened was Stephen had been sneaking around the school one night putting super glue in all the school locks. Years after the incident, and keeping it secret, Stephen finally told me about his genius plan. He had mapped out all the escape routes, and set a number of diversions. He had been scoping the school out for weeks before, and he drew up a map of all the school. The next day the janitor put the key in the door to open the school and his key broke. The school was all locked up and the school day would have been cancelled except that they found a window that was unlocked. Normally I do not condone acts of vandalism, but in this case I find it acceptable. Certain members of the administration found a sadistic pleasure in persicuting Stephen as well as other students. It may never be clear why stephen was chosen by the administration to be picked on. What is clear is that Stephen went down as the unsung hero for the students of Dayton High School.
~By Michael Whitehead (Stephen's younger brother)