George Stranahan Obituary (1931 – 2021) – Toledo, OH

George Stranahan, a Renaissance man and grandson of champion Spark Plug co-founder Frank Stranahan, died on May 20 in a Denver hospital. He was 89.

Known as a philosopher, physicist, barfly, photographer, rancher, and mountain man, George Stranahan was a businessman who darted through his career in an adventurous life.

He died of a stroke and other health problems, his wife Patti Stranahan told the New York Times on Sunday.

A native of Toledo who lived in the Rocky Mountains for most of his life, George Stranahan was one of the heirs to the fortunes of Champion Spark Plug Co., founded in Boston in 1903 and relocated to Toledo in 1910, provided the Stranahan family with a fortune of millions of dollars that had a lasting impact on the Toledo region.

Mr. Stranahan rejected the privileged life from a young age.

According to his son Patrick Stranahan, he had a thirst for knowledge who added that his father used his inherited money, as well as what he made himself, to pursue everything he saw as a worthwhile investment in businesses, nonprofits, side projects, activism and other ventures.

“What makes my father George special is that he was a phenomenal and fascinating person who just did what he wanted, where he wanted,” said Patrick Stranahan.

Although he was born and raised in the Toledo area, George Stranahan spent most of his adult life in the Rocky Mountains. At the time of his death, he was living in Carbondale, Colo.

He was born on November 5, 1931 to Duane and Virginia “Diddy” Secor Stranahan.

George’s father, Duane Stranahan, was Vice President Aviation at Champion Spark Plug. His mother, Virginia Stranahan, the daughter of a prominent banker, was a housewife and hospital volunteer.

George Stranahan was one of the couple’s six children.

The family’s homestead at 577 E. Front St., Perrysburg, is now the 577 Foundation, which focuses on the arts and the environment.

As a child, George Stranahan attended an elite school for the east, the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut.

The future entrepreneur described his childhood as lonely in an interview with the New York Times in 2001. He was more interested in studying physics than anything else.

Shortly after graduating from the California Institute of Technology in 1953, Mr. Stranahan married his first wife, Elizabeth Ann Lamb, in January 1954. The new wife Stranahan grew up in Perrysburg. She and her new husband would eventually have five children, including Patrick, before they divorced.

After his second marriage also ended in divorce, Mr. Stranahan met and married Patti Stranahan, with whom he had a sixth child, a son. They were married for over 40 years. She was by his side and took the helm through most of the greatest adventures of his life, said Patrick Stranahan.

During the early years of his first marriage, Mr. Stranahan served in the army in the middle of the Korean War. He taught radar and was primarily based in New Jersey, his son said.

Patrick Stranahan described his father’s childhood as unconventional. He said he saw firsthand how his father’s interests changed and grew – everything from the mechanics of repairing an oven to building a shortwave radio from scratch.

“We spent a lot of time watching in the dark room while he took prints and often smoked a cigar,” he said. “He had this infinite curiosity about how everything works.”

In 1961, George Stranahan received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, formerly the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

After a stay at Purdue University, he began to work as a professor at Michigan State in 1965.

Education was a lifelong passion for George Stranahan, who started two charter schools for 8th grade students near Aspen, Colo, Patrick Stranahan said.

He described his father as “a huge tree in his community”.

George Stranahan spent most of his young adulthood studying.

The budding physicist spent three summers at the end of the 1950s in a remote mountain valley near Aspen, where he founded the Aspen Center for Physics.

At 27, after inheriting $ 3 million, he assembled a group of funders, nonprofit executives, and physicists. He invested $ 38,000 to build a building.

The center was to play a central role in the development of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago, which has long been the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, and the formulation of string theory, which many physicists viewed as the most promising candidate for a “theory of everything” will “that would explain all physical phenomena in the universe.

In 1962, its first summer in operation, the Aspen Center for Physics was home to 42 physicists. Since then, 66 Nobel Prize winners have visited.

In 1972 Stranahan left his position at Michigan State University and reduced his commitment to the Aspen Center.

It was around this time that the physicist turned much of his 1,500 acre Aspen property into a ranch for ranching. He would go out of business after 18 years and suffer an estimated loss of $ 1 million despite raising a grand champion bull.

In 1980, Mr. Stranahan opened a bar near Aspen, Woody Creek Tavern, where he spent several years mixing drinks. With the introduction of his Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey brand, the entrepreneur also became a single malt producer. He had a distillery installed in a barn on his property.

In 1989, Cooper Industries bought Champion Spark Plug for $ 800 million.

The Stranahan family held a 35 percent stake in the company at the time.

A year later, George Stranahan founded the Flying Dog Brewpub in Aspen.

Flying Dog’s labels were designed by illustrator Ralph Steadman, whose most famous contributor was also a regular at Woody Creek, the late gonzo journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson.

Mr. Thompson either leased or bought the land he lived on from Mr. Stranahan.

“We talked a lot, drank a lot and blasted a lot,” Stranahan said in a 2008 interview with the Denver Post. “If you’re a rancher, you have access to dynamite.”

While a number of stories about George Stranahan could have been embellished, Patrick Stranahan noted that his father actually loved dynamite.

“He was a very calm, tolerant, well-mannered man, but if ever something had to be blown up, he did,” said Patrick Stranahan.

George Stranahan preceded his son Mark Stranahan in death; Brothers Duane Stranhan and Stephen Stranahan and sister Virginia “Dinny” Stranahan Linder.

He leaves behind his third wife Patti Stranahan and his son Ben Stranahan from this marriage. He also leaves four children from his first marriage, Molly, Patrick, Stuart and Brie Stranahan; a brother, Michael, and a sister, Mary Stranahan; and nine grandchildren.

Information from The Blade’s intelligence services was used in this report.

Published by The Blade on June 22, 2021.