Stephen Stranahan

1934 - 2019

(News story) Stephen Stranahan, a business owner known for civic leadership and philanthropy, who was a grandson of a Champion Spark Plug Co. co-founder and whose maternal forebears shaped Toledo in the mid-19th century, died Monday at Admiral at the Lake retirement community in Chicago. He was 84.

He developed complications related to Alzheimer's disease, his wife, Ann Stranahan, said. The couple moved nearly two years ago from Perrysburg to Admiral at the Lake.

He was last active in business about six years ago, as chairman of Entelco Corp., a diversified holding company. He invested through the years in such firms as Andover Controls and Craft House, the paint-by-number company.

Under the aegis of Entelco, the couple built Home Ranch in northwest Colorado as a family vacation and outdoor activity resort.

The Toledo area remained home.

"We never considered moving anywhere else," said his wife, a leader for years with WGTE public broadcasting. "We were both doing what we thought was good and important work in Toledo. We were very happy and very busy."

In 2015, the Toledo Symphony honored the Stranahans for their stewardship, as benefactors, but also Mr. Stranahan's long service as a board member and board president.

A pianist and a music major at Dartmouth College, from which he graduated, Mr. Stranahan "had a deep personal interest in the art form itself," said Robert Bell, symphony president emeritus. "He was a perfect gentleman, a cultured sophisticated human being."

Marie Celeste Stranahan, his paternal grandmother, was a founder of the symphony. His leadership later also included being a "strong adviser in how to be financially prudent," Mr. Bell said.

"I think she would have been wonderfully proud of what her grandson did on behalf of the symphony and the arts in the community," Mr. Bell said. "Steve followed very much in her spirit. Because of the two of them, the symphony is in a place it never would have been without the foundation they provided."

Mr. Stranahan was born May 3, 1934, to Virginia Secor Stranahan and Duane Stranahan, Sr. His father was the only child of Frank D. Stranahan, who, with brother R.A. Stranahan, Sr., formed the spark plug company and moved to Toledo in 1910.

His mother grew up in the Secor family mansion in the Old West End, her father a Toledo resident since the 1850s and a prominent banker. She helped found the Junior League of Toledo and the League of Women Voters in Perrysburg

The family moved to 577 E. Front St. in Perrysburg, in 1940, with its stables and indoor riding ring, fostering in her children an appreciation for the outdoors and in time starting a summer day camp there. The property decades later became the 577 Foundation, with a focus on the arts and the environment. Mr. Stranahan served as president of the foundation's trustees.

He attended Maumee Valley Country Day School and Brooks School in North Andover, Mass., before Dartmouth College.

He was a specialist in the 107th Armored Cavalry Regiment of the Ohio Army National Guard.

His first job was in the marketing department of Champion, but he grew restless. He found an opportunity to buy a small airport at Telegraph and Alexis roads, National Airport, and operated National Flight Services, which later moved to Toledo Express Airport as a fixed-base operator, his wife said. He also became a dealer of Beechcraft airplanes.

His affinity for flight came from his father, who was a pioneer of Champion's spark plugs for aircraft.

"His father was like something out of a movie with Robert Redford. His father flew open cockpit planes in the '30s," his wife said.

Mr. Stranahan was a leader on the rise through the 1960s, as he was elected president of Downtown Toledo Associates and the Toledo Area Chamber of Commerce, and was named Young Man of the Year by the Junior Chamber of Commerce.

He along with Ned Skeldon, then president of the board of Lucas County commissioners, bankers Willard I. Webb III, and Henry Morse, arranged for the return in 1964 of minor league baseball - the Mud Hens - to Toledo. Mr. Stranahan also was president of Civic Pride Inc., which owned the Toledo Blades hockey team.

He was a former director of Champion Spark Plug. He was also a former chairman of the Small Business Assistance Corp., which administered city and federal loan programs.

He was chairman of the University of Toledo trustees and chairman of the UT Foundation trustees. He joined Blade co-publisher Paul Block, Jr., Mr. Skeldon, and Thomas Anderson of The Andersons in forming Clear Water Inc. to campaign for cleaning up the Lake Erie watershed.

His firm, Riverview One, erected Fiberglas Tower downtown, and he was a leader in the Maumee business development, Arrowhead Park.

"I'm not content to be just a custodian of the status quo," Mr. Stranahan told The Blade's Elsie Cram in 1967. "The real thing that interests me is to build something - something better."

Holding public office didn't capture his interest.

"I think I may be more effective as kind of a bee humming around and stinging perhaps once in a while - serving perhaps as a liaison between business and government," Mr. Stranahan said in 1967.

He had the largest influence on UT, his wife said.

"He took it from being a municipal school to a state school. He was the one who said we needed to have an endowment fund," his wife said. "He was there for significant institution-changing growth.

"I've always said and believed that if you had Steve Stranahan on your board, you were going to go as far as you could go," his wife said. "Certainly if you had him as your chair. He did all of his homework. He was totally prepared. He thought about the alternatives, knew where he wanted to go. I have never seen another person as well prepared as he was.

"He was laid back. He had this kind of dry wit," his wife said. "He was totally himself. There was not an entitled bone in his family."

Surviving are his wife, Ann Anderson Stranahan, whom he married June 14, 1958; daughters Frances Parry and Abbot Stranahan Ward; sons Stephen "Josh" Stranahan and Daniel Stranahan; sister, Mary Stranahan; brothers Michael, George, and Duane "Pat" Stranahan, Jr.; eight grandchildren and a great-grandson.

Services are pending.

The family suggests tributes to the Toledo Symphony; Maumee Valley Country Day School, or a charity of the donor's choice.

This is a news story by Mark Zaborney. Contact him at:mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.