Stephen Ranger

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Biography

I am the second of eleven children of our parents Theodore and Betty Ranger. I grew up in a small town in northeastern Michigan. Our family had a 200 acre farm and a sawmill. At the sawmill, we made custom lumber, railroad ties and industrial lumber for use in automotive factories. Working on the farm and at the sawmill is where my interest in mechanical repair began. My brothers and I began working on the farm and at the sawmill at a young age, around age 7-8 years. We quickly learned the value of work which I was then and remain thankful for today.

After graduation from Alcona Community High School in June, 1968, I moved to Dearborn, Michigan to begin my working career at Fairlane Drilling and Testing while taking classes learning auto mechanics at Henry Ford Community College. I dreamed of expanding my education and wanted to attend the Lawrence School of Technology in Detroit to become an automotive engineer. This did not occur as I could not find a way to pay for higher education and still live in the city. I lived in Dearborn until late 1969 when I moved to and briefly lived in Flint, Michigan working at a Chevrolet engine factory. I quickly realized that factory work was not my interest, so moved to reside in Warren and found a job at D.P. Brother Advertising in the Fisher Building, Woodward Ave in Detroit. This was a highly interesting job for a very naive and inexperienced country boy, however it was a highly enjoyable time in my life. After a year of white collar work, I moved to a new profession and a blue collar job at Stan Yees Collision, East 10 Mile Road at Gratiot Avenue in East Detroit (now named Eastpoint). I spent three years at Stan Yees Collision, learning more about automobile repair and having much fun as a daytime auto body repairman and an after work hobby as a fabricator and mechanic with Stan Yees #33 oval car racing team. I also assisted my friend Jim McCormick building race car engines and learned so much with him. We had some famous drivers including Joe Ruttman and John Anderson and visited several well known racetracks in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kansas. Both of those drivers went on to future NASCAR careers.

For some reason which I still don't understand why today, city life did not agree with me, so I returned to my childhood town of Barton City in August, 1973 to help my father at the sawmill. This did not last long after I realized there could be no longterm future in a small northern Michigan town. With the assistance of my fathers longtime friend Wayne Stuve, I moved to Alaska in May, 1974 and have resided here ever since. In Alaska, I worked in the logging, concrete production, civil construction, equipment mechanics and underground mining fields until 1981, when an injury at the Independence Mine in Hatcher Pass sent me into physical rehabilitation for five months. During this time of personal reflection about my future dreams, I applied to attend the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. I spent four and a half years in Fairbanks, and obtained a BS degree in Mine Engineering in December, 1985. I spent the next 30 years in the civil and mining engineering profession and retired in 2015.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Stephen Ranger at registration.