SpringfieldNewsSun.com

NEW CARLISLE, Ohio — As a government scientist during the Cold War, Don Stevison first worked on plans for an atomic-powered plane.

But with the right combination of lard, beeswax, glycerin and water, the New Carlisle resident seems more like a product of a different era — when riverboats chugged and Russia had a czar.

With his handlebar mustache, Stevison just looks like a ragtime banjo player, which makes his recent induction into the National Four-String Banjo Hall of Fame all the more fitting.

Like an actor getting into a role, he grew the mustache when he started playing banjo — and songs like "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee" — in 1978.

"I've got to have a handlebar mustache," he recalled thinking, "to fit in with the era of music I'm playing.

"It was nice and dark then."

Retired since 1991 from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where all his work as a nuclear physicist was classified, Stevison got a banjo at the suggestion of a chemist.

Three decades later, he was inducted into the hall for his contribution to four-string education and instruction.

Stevison self-publishes instructional books that have been sold worldwide.

"I had a couple of books from Mel Bay and I didn't like the way they taught banjo," he said. "You need to make things as easy as possible."

Part of the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma, the hall of fame honors banjo players who opt to strum with four strings — a relic of ragtime and early jazz.

Bluegrass picking, for the record, is done with a five-string banjo.

But musical contributions aside, Stevison also can take credit for the very thing that makes him stand out: He helped formulate a better mustache wax.

In the early '80s, he and a few bandmates in the Kettering Banjo Society — all with handlebar mustaches — acted as guinea pigs so Nestle (yes, the chocolate company) could find the right combination of ingredients for a good wax.

"We went through 209 formulations," he said.

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