Steve was the kind of local institution that makes MIT such a special place to be around -- a nice and incredibly knowledgeable guy who ran the swapfest, attended the radio club meetings, brought his generator to field day every year, and loved sharing his wisdom with undergrads, graduate students, or anybody in need from the broader Boston scientific community who found their way to a club meeting. He seemed to be a real engineer's engineer. His stories about the Daedelus project (which set records for human-powered flight, some of which I think are still standing) were pretty incredible. I hadn't talked to Steve in years, but I will miss him.

We crossed paths. Steve was always recruiting volunteers to help staple up announcement posters for swapfest. If you didn't decline strongly enough, you'd never walk away from a conversation with him without a small stack of posters. My impression was of a man with so much history that I knew nothing about: as if I could meet him a hundred times and never be a blip on his radar, he'd been doing this for so long. When you visited the radio society's storage room and saw decade upon decade of dusty and inscrutable equipment, lifetimes' worth of projects, of disassembly and re-assembly--- well, what do I know. Keith can tell you much better than I. But it seems to me that Steve was the kind of person who could start a million things, finish half, and still sleep well at night, comfortable that he'd get to it eventually.

Steve was a really curious character, he had an endless supply of stories but was still excited about tearing down a strange bit of electronics late on a Friday evening. He'd gladly hand you a stack of fluorescent signs to help advertise the swap meet, while explaining about some obscure Draper project from eons ago.

Thank you, Steve.

For those who don't know, SK is an initialism for "Silent Key", a euphemism for radio amateurs who have died.

Thanks, I didn't know that. I find it very poignant.

The MIT flea was a formative thing for me - I went and bought and/or sold weird things at maybe 40+ fleas. I first saw L0pht heavy industries there. It was one of my favorite ways to meet interesting people. In fact, it was also perhaps my second favorite museum. Enigma machines, Robots, lasers… I think there was some sort of rocket/missile guidance system there once. I didn’t realize Steve had founded it. I didn’t know him well at all aside from he seemed genuinely nice and to love what he was doing. Thank you, Steve.