Ronald F. Crane, 83, died April 19, 2005, at Mercy Medical Center, Oshkosh. He had been ill for several years and died of complications from pneumonia.
He was born in Chicago on November 14, 1921, to Ronald Salmon Crane and Julia Lehigh Fuller Crane. He was educated at the University of Chicago, attended the Laboratory School there as a child and was graduated from high school in 1938. After earning an A.B. degree in English Literature at Chicago in 1942, he worked on the Manhattan Project for a time and attended officer training school. He enlisted in the Army in 1943 as a 2nd Lieutenant, trained as a paratrooper and learned to locate and destroy mines. His unit, the Antitank Company of the 134th Infantry, 35th Division of George Patton's Third Army, was sent to France in July 1944, and saw combat along a line a few miles east of the Normandy beaches to the Rhine River. In September, near Joigny, France, he was wounded, but after hospitalization in England and Wales returned to combat and was in command of the occupation of the town of Bacharach on the Rhine River when the war ended. He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant, was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star, returned to the United States for extensive medical treatment, and was honorably discharged in March 1946. He resumed his studies at the University of Chicago and earned an A.M. degree in 1947 with an emphasis in bibliography and the development of the book.
In 1959 he joined the English Department at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and taught literature there until his retirement in 1992. As a faculty member, he worked actively on academic freedom and governance issues and, at the time of the layoff of tenured faculty in the 1970s, he developed a special interest in university budgets. On numerous occasions, he represented faculty members in tenure or other personnel disputes and worked regularly to develop bylaws and other governance documents to clarify and guarantee faculty rights. On those occasions in this work when meetings or encounters became heated, he remained calm, fair and analytical, relying on data and reasoned argument to persuade, and he was always unafraid of consequences when seeking justice in the face of hostile authority.
Ron's father chaired the English Department at the University of Chicago for many years and founded there the New Criticism school of literary criticism which shaped Ron's intellectual development. The rigor with which he approached ideas, his lifelong respect for truth based on evidence, his self-reliance and his lack of cant, sentimentality and belief in the supernatural grew out of that early experience. His mentor at Chicago was Norman Maclean, a friend of the family, master teacher and author of A River Runs Through It, and Maclean's unpretentious, straight talking intellectual acumen was also a model for Ron's development. As a child, he lived with his parents in England for a time and visited there often in later life and, from that and from reading, developed a substantive knowledge and appreciation of the English language and of English culture.
Beginning in the 1920s, he and his family summered in Door County, Wisconsin, and his parents later acquired a summer house in Ephraim and he bought a cottage there. He came to regard the village as his second home and his favorite summer place, and learned drafting, woodworking, furniture making and other practical and creative skills so that he could maintain, repair and improve the Door County houses and surrounding land. He enjoyed European travel, collected antique maps and listened to music as diverse as early Blues, Appalachian and African folk songs, swing from the Big Band era, Baroque chamber music and Verdi opera. His tastes in literature ranged from Catch 22 and Patrick O'Brien to the Metaphysical Poets and the early Romantics. He appreciated objects that looked natural and simple but had a complexity of construction--especially fine old books, antique furniture, well made boxes and well done photographs. He was something of an amateur computer software pioneer, developing programs in the 80s while other humanists were focusing on word processing.
He was an imaginative story teller who made up elaborate tales for his little daughter's bedtime pleasure and later for his growing daughter's edification, relaying early Door County or school adventures, war stories, entertaining details from novels or revealing assessments from newspaper articles and cartoons. He regularly read The Oshkosh Northwestern and criticized its grammatical errors and inaccurate headlines, and he looked forward to the Sunday New York Times for its book reviews and columns by Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd. Among his acquaintances were a Supreme Court Justice, a former Treasury Secretary and several famous poets, but he was unmoved by mere celebrity, valuing people instead for the substance of their characters. He respected the courteous, friendly, and efficient gentlemen who picked up the garbage and cleaned the septic tank as human beings far superior to the President of the United States. He was a compassionate friend and a kind and loving father and husband who maintained a sense of humor until the last days of his life, suggesting, one morning when his doctor in intensive care assured him that all his vital signs were getting better, that such good news delivered in such circumstances reminded him of Candide.
Ron is survived by his wife, Virginia Glenn Crane, and his daughter, Amelia Winslow Crane, both of Oshkosh, and by a nephew, Thomas Crane Gibson of Madison, and a niece, Julia Gibson Kant of Pittsburgh and her two sons, Benjamin and Peter.
Burial will be in a private ceremony at the Moravian Cemetery in Ephraim in Door County. Friends and family are welcome to visit with Virginia and Amelia at the family home on Sunday, April 24, at 2:00 in the afternoon. Memorial gifts may be sent to the Barbara Sniffen Faculty Governance Award fund at the UW Oshkosh Foundation.