Warren D. Lange

A remembrance for Warren D. Lange will be held on Saturday, May 18 at Central United Methodist Church, 222 Cass St., Traverse City. Visitation and a virtual viewing will be at 3 p.m., followed by a Memorial in Music at 4 p.m. A light supper will follow for friends and family.
After several months of various health issues that he bore with fortitude, Warren died in quietude via comfort care given by Hospice of Michigan while at French Manor South. His life partner for over 52 years, and spouse, Lois Fay Golightly, was at his side, grateful for his release from chronic pain.
The son of Herman J. Lange and Amanda Ida Redmann, Warren was born Dec. 5, 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. By 1924 the family had moved to the Beloit, Wisconsin, area where his only sibling, James A., was born. In 1927 their parents bought the original Redmann farm on South Ridge near Houston, Minnesota, where the boys' mother had been raised.
The Great Depression took a terrible toll on farmers, including the Langes. In 1935 their home and farmland was lost "to the bank." In fact, loss of the farm made such an impact on the boys that Warren's urn with his ashes will join with Jim's (deceased 2009), now buried in a back section of that lost farmland. With permission by present-day owners, the urns and brothers' ashes will lay together through eternity, under a burial cairn, reclaiming a bit of what they always "owned" in their hearts.
Jim started school in the same grade as Warren, though one-and-a-half years younger. Thus, both finished their one-room school education at the same time while in Minnesota. (Warren extolled his one-room school experience as "best" for early education, all his life.) The family moved to LaCross, Wisconsin, where their father found work and his sons finished high school there together.
Eager to strike out on his own, Warren left the day after graduation for the big city, Detroit, and a job. At first he stayed with his favorite maternal aunt, Mabel. She later wrote that he was "really very sentimental; you wouldn't think so just meeting him as he covers it up quite well." Decades later, Lois could attest to that.
After trying a few jobs he became a foreman in a factory and was given a draft deferment until he enlisted in December 1942 and called to active duty in August 1943. Eventually sent to the South Pacific after flight training, he wasn't too happy piloting a slow moving torpedo bomber. The Japanese Zeros were too fast and pilots too skilled.
During some state-side duty, he met and married his first wife (Eleanor B. Whitney, deceased). Upon discharge from the Navy in 1946, they bought a home near Warren's folks using money sent to Eleanor from his service poker winnings! In November 1947 their son, Calvin Joel, was born.
After a brief stint on Cadillac Motor Car Division's assembly line (where Lois also worked some 30 years later), he was encouraged and able to enter the General Motors Institute, now Kettering University. Warren graduated with a five-year Bachelor of Science degree in engineering on June 26, 1952. "Five years" because at that time GMI students did on-site work time as part of the degree requirements. The Cadillac Division plant became his workplace until retirement in 1980, other than some brief company assignments to Canada and Mexico.
Long before retirement, true to the saying "you can take the boy out of the farm but you can't take the farm out of the boy," Warren and Eleanor purchased a home more rurally located. He worked a truck farm there and raised chickens despite the long commute. To toil in the soil was a welcome break from office and factory time in the city.
Work rarely kept Warren from competitive sports as evidenced by his upper and lower bridge work, acquired as a result of his youthful "very" aggressive hockey playing. Softball, indoor badminton, crewing in the Port Huron to Mackinac sailboat race, golf and tennis all lured him. In his late 80s and early 90s, as his left hip joint was grinding to a halt, Warren switched to pickleball, which he grew to love and extoll as much as the one-room schoolhouse.
Another major interest, starting in Wisconsin as a teenager, for some 80 years, was amateur radio. Warren attained the highest ranking, Extra Class, and used the call sign W8KAN - now a "silent key." His yearly field day exercises (off the grid), weekly emergency station sign-ins and disaster communication handling for long hours - as needed - were all part of what many hams do via their "hobby." It's still the world's back-up communication system when others fail.
A year or so after each had gone through a divorce, Lois and Warren met in the spring of 1966 through a computer introduction service. Their first "blind" date also included his mother and aunt. In July Lois joined the rest of his family when they married. His son, Cal, had already moved to Florida, where he still lives, from the Livonia home built when the truck farming ended.
Lois' three children, while not filling Cal's absence, did fill Warren's house with youthful exuberance; daughter, Jimi Lee, and sons, Jeffrey and James Haswell (ranging in ages 9 to 13 at the time) now reside in Michigan, Colorado and New York, respectively.
In the late 1960s the house was sold to finance a ketch-rigged 13.5 x 46 foot sailboat. Then for the next 10-plus years, Warren and Lois spent the majority of their non-paid working time building up KIVA, from a purchased fiberglass hull shell.
Before selling it, after their move to Traverse City in 1981, they lived on it (including winter!) and sailed Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. On these Great Lakes they experienced the fierce storms of spring and fall during transfer trips to and from St. Clair Shores.
In his lifetime Warren was involved with many religious activities: church sponsored Boy Scouts and church classes along with Habitat for Humanity, Koinonia Partners, Stephen Ministries and Traverse City churches' Safe Harbor care for the homeless. He supported Lois' civil rights work as well, including her arrest with other Quakers while supporting The Poor Peoples' Campaign, plus her feminist writings.
That included acting as her "gofer" providing many back-up hours, when after a lot of hankering and hustling, Lois brought Judy Chicago's the Birth Project to Traverse City in February 1986. Sponsored, and partially funded, by Northwestern Michigan College's Student Government Association, the collaborative needleworked images were displayed in the Oleson Center on campus. As the first such viewing in Michigan, visitors came from far and wide. The statewide publicity inadvertently contributed to enthusiasm for establishing the community art museum at NMC which opened in 1991.
In addition to his wife, Lois Golightly, Warren is survived by his beloved son, Calvin; and grandchildren, Heather Lange Gourlay (Rick) and Timothy (Renee' Bouley), all in Florida. His sister-in-law, Phyllis Lange (Jim, deceased); and nephews, Glenn (Cathy) and Mark (Marci) Lange, all reside in New York. A third nephew, Jared Lange, lives in Michigan. Warren also leaves behind his challenging and communicative stepchildren; daughter, Jimi Lee; and sons, Jeffrey and James (Barbara) Haswell.
Since 1994 his membership and church family, especially the choir, has been amongst those at Central United Methodist Church, known for its many mission projects, locally and abroad. Contributions in Warren's memory may be made out to CUMC and sent to 222 Cass St., Traverse City, MI, 49684. Please designate "Missions."
Cremation plus other goods and services were graciously provided through Reynolds-Jonkhoff Funeral Home, Traverse City.