From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm Meg Bowles, and in this show, we have stories of that special person who did something or said something

that changed those around them. The parent, the teacher, the volunteer, the celebrity,

the dependable best friend or the surprise guest. We encounter people every day, and sometimes

they leave a lasting impact. Our first storyteller, Greg Carga, shared this story at one of our open mic story

slams in San Francisco, which was supported by public radio stations KALW and KQED.

Live from the Rickshaw stop, here's Greg Kuroga.

I was 10 years old when my parents got divorced, and my mom did the thing that made the most sense to her.

She hooked up with my dad's sister's ex-husband, who'd always been Uncle Steve to me.

He was a pot-growing Vietnam veteran who had lost his vocal cords to a hand grenade in Vietnam that blew up.

It also opened up his knee, and it left him dead in the mash unit for all of three minutes,

which greatly changed his perspective on life.

And it also made every metal detector who ever went through just light up like a Christmas tree.

Everybody around us called him whispering Steve because he couldn't talk like normal, he whispered.

And I quickly adapted to whispering Steve instead of Uncle Steve.

The one thing about whispering Steve is that he'd always been a really good dad to his two

sons, my brother cousins.

And I'd always admired the way that he'd been a father to them.

So it wasn't so much like I had lost an uncle as gained a father in the vacuum that

was left when my parents split up. And Steve was

this guy who always wanted there to be magic in the world, especially for the kids around him.

He went to great lengths to make sure that there was magic filled every event. I mean,

...