Remembering my Dad — Steve Kuban Sr. on February 7th 1978

On this night, Feb 7th, 37 years ago, I drove my dad in haste to the emergency ward of the only hospital in our small community—the same hospital where I had come into this world 17 years earlier. My mom and I did not know what was happening to him, but we suspected that he had suffered a serious heart attack. While Mom waited anxiously at home, I drove dad hurriedly the few miles to the hospital. Dad moaned, clutching his chest in agony, “Not too fast Steve, we don’t want the police stop us.” I knew this was serious. We pulled up to the hospital’s back emergency door. I jumped out, and rang and rang the bell, but nobody came to open the door, for what seemed like hours. Finally they opened up, and rushed dad in. I was right beside him.

My dad, Steve Sr., shortly before his death, doing what he loved most to do — playing the button accordion as we’d jam and sing polkas from “The Old Country” together. My dad was a true music lover, and his greatest joy was playing together with me at the piano. It started when I was only 4 years old, and we continued until the day of his death at age 52, when I was 17.

My next-door neighbor was the nurse on duty that night. She lived two doors down from our house. Our families went back together a long time. Her husband was my dad’s boss at work for as many years as I can remember. Our families had grown up as next-door neighbours, even following each other to the remote secluded community in Northern BC for a ten year period of my early school-age life. Ann was her name.

I watched Ann hook up my dad to the heart monitor and other machines. It was so scary, seeing him lying there with tubes and IV attached. I’d never seen my dad looking so…helpless. I didn’t want to leave, but I needed to go fetch my mom and bring her to the hospital. After being with dad in the emergency room about ten minutes, I squeezed his hand and said, “I love you, dad!”, and then waved goodbye. Dad gave a weak but reassuring smile to me, which relieved my worried heart very much. I knew he was going to be okay. I smiled back, waved goodbye, then left the emergency ward and drove hastily back home to pick up my mom and little brother Mike (who was 16, I was 17).

My dad Steve Kuban Sr. (he’s the little boy with the yellow circle), his father John Kuban (blue circle) with local coal-mining neighbours who emigrated from Slovakia. Notice the ‘standard’ musical equipment of the day — button accordions!

I arrived home and waited for them in the living room, as they prepared to go out the door. I will never forget the next few moments, though they seem hazy in my memory, but vivid in their reality. The TV that dad had been watching, when the pain first seized his heart an hour earlier, was still on. The famous and beloved comedy series of 1978, “All in the Family” was playing. It was dad’s favorite show. It was almost a ritual that we’d watch it together every night after dinner. (I often thought Archie Bunker looked a lot like my dad). But this time the comedy show seemed hollow, and I remember how strange and surreal it felt hearing the canned laughter of the show without my dad’s laughter and presence right there among us.

Steve Kuban Jr. (together with a local neighbor) jamming with his young nephews Brian (on drums) and Rob (singing).

My mom was on the phone with the hospital. She hardly spoke any words. When she hung up, she came and stood beside my little brother Mike and I. With great sadness she looked at us and sobbed, “Dad died.”

The loss of our dear dad was one of the saddest moments of all our lives. He was only 52 years young. Too young.

On this day, the anniversary of his death, I remember dad with much love. He was a wonderful father, who loved me to bits, never doubted me, forgave me when I’d mess up (and there were certainly many of those times). But most importantly, he encouraged me and supported me in my love for music, and my quest for knowledge.

My dad Steve Kuban Sr. — what a handsome guy! (my parent’s would always tell their five kids, that they inherited their good looks from their dad, and their brains from their mom!

When I was going to bed as a 3 year old, I’d fall asleep listening to my dad playing the accordion, accompanied by the joyful singing of our many neighbours (many of whom had come from Slovakia, which my parents affectionately called, “The Old Country”, to work in the coal-mines of the southern BC-Alberta mountain border towns where we lived). I can recall every night hearing the “thump, thump, thump” of Dad’s foot stomping, in time with the music he’d be playing and all the neighbours would be singing. I can still hear it today in my memory, just as vividly as I did at age 3 laying there in my bed. It’s one of the most beautiful, warm sounds I ever remember.

Before I turned four, I began playing the piano by ear. My mom and dad were shocked, because they soon heard me plunking out the melodies of the very same songs that my dad had been playing the night before with the neighbours! They recognized that there was a special musical gift in their little boy Steve Jr.

It wasn’t long after this, that dad would ask me to stay up late at night, together with him, and we’d play those wonderful old European polkas together, for all the neighbours! Songs like, “I Don’t Want Her, You Can Have Her”, “O dem Golden Slippers” and dozens of others. And thus began a lifetime of incredible support my dad and mom gave me, to help me learn to play and understand music.

Steve Kuban Jr. as a teenage professional keyboardist, playing some of the musical equipment provided by his mother and father, Steve Kuban Sr.

Dad and mom sacrificed so much for me to be able to learn music. We weren’t a wealthy family by any means. They bought guitars, drums, cassette players, you name it. When I was about eight they bought an old furniture store, and then became musical equipment wholesalers, for the express purpose so that they could provide the best and latest keyboard equipment for their son! Soon I began playing in a band in my little hometown of Ft. Nelson, BC, and became a star attraction in our little isolated northern community—at the age of 14 I was in our town’s most famous top-40 band, playing for all the community dances, in the Elk’s Club, in the Royal Canadian Legion, and for high-school dances, with over $10,000 dollars (1974 dollars at that) of synthesizers, organs and electric pianos. Yes, my mom and dad were the greatest support of my musical career!

I love my dad, for all he did for me, and all he provided for me. He truly took care of us, his family, both in life, and in his death.

My mom and dad on their 25th wedding Anniversary, three years before his death.

When my dad died, he left a modest life insurance policy to take care of my mom, my little brother Mike, and me. From this, my mom quickly used a significant amount to enroll me in world’s best jazz schools, Berklee College of Music, in Boston (It was very expensive then. Today it costs $34,000 tuition per year). This was unimaginable, for a little boy who grew up in Northern Canada just south of the Arctic Circle, in a town of 3,000 people that was so isolated, that to reach the next town of any size required a five hour drive through the bush. Mom had said, “It’s what dad would have wanted for you Steve. He wanted the very best for you. He loved and almost idolized you. You and Mike were his pride and joy.”

On this anniversary of my dear dad’s passing, I want to just say how dearly I love him, how thankful I am to him, and for him, and for all he and my mom did or me as I grew up, so passionately in love with music. What I am today, could never have come about if it were not for my dad and mom’s r undying love and support for their children, and especially me, Steve Jr.