Richard Stiff:
CLASS OF 1972
North High SchoolClass of 1972
Eau claire, WI
Little Big Horn CollegeClass of 2000
Crow agency, MT
Montana State University Class of 1998
Bozeman, MT
Billings Central Catholic High SchoolClass of 1990
Billings, MT
University of MontanaClass of 1979
Missoula, MT
Richard's Story
After high school I attended UWEC for 3 years, then transfered to the University of Montana. Being short of money, I worked and went to school for years, until graduating in 1979 in Cell Biology. Along the way I worked as a gas station attendant, bartender, logger, timber thinning contractor, and district manager for a newspaper circulation department (The Missoulian). In 1985 I started teaching Science at Billings Central High School, and spent 24 years teaching Science at high schools and tribal colleges. In summers, from 1989 to 2001, I was the fish biologist in the Absaroka-Beartooth wilderness and got to go backpacking and fishing for money. I acquired an MS in Fish and Wildlife management from Montana State in 1998 comparing the growth of trout in two lakes at over 10,000 feet of elevation. Along the way it seems I married half of the girls in MT, but have been with my wife, Dianne for the past 13 years. I share daughters (18 Rikki, and 19 Carrie Jo) with one of those, and my son, Jonathan(21, my son with Dianne), will be a sophomore in music at UM in the fall. In 2003, I picked up a fungal disease while showing my kids where I grew up in Wisconsin (Blastomycosis). It was misdiagnosed as an autoimmune disease for 3 1/2 years, and had pretty much ruined my health before they caught on. I'm now retired, and living in Billings, with my wife Dianne and our 3 springer spaniels, Newt, Chuck and Grace. I still love the outdoors and do as much as I can. Despite health problems I still do karate once a week with a school called Toushi Kan. I am a second degree black belt, and the rest of the family has brown belts. I became a "born again" Christian in 1975, and am actively involved in a Four-Square church called Faith Chapel in Billings. I share a daily devotion that I put out as an email to a number of Christian friends that I've met over the years. To keep busy, I've been working on an educational doctorate, and only need finish a dissertion to complete that. I do a lot of volunteer stuff, with hunter education, and fishing programs. Life is good, health is not so good, and time marches onward.
The site mentioned posting something about my first car, and I di...Expand for more
dn't find the question in this list, but here goes anyway. My first car was a white '62 Chevy station wagon that burned a lot of oil. I bought it in '72 for $125 before going to college. It had a kind of trunk inside, in the back, that was big enough to actually fit two small people, and we found an interesting use for that. Mike Mills and I were dating the Traynor twins, and we took them to the outdoor theater, and they would hide in that inside trunk to we wouldn't have to pay for them. Weren't we just rotten boyfriends? Weren't they a couple of angels to do that? I sold that car, and replaced it with a '65 Plymouth Belvedere, that I bought from Steve Gladwell for $85. Imagine that. Now a car that even runs is a thousand dollars.
You know, my favorite teacher was Mr. Zimmerman, the math teacher. He was also the wrestling coach, and I thought I could improve my math grade by wrestling. It's funny to me how I became known for wrestling, even though I did wrestle in college and beyond. (I won the (Montana) Big Sky State Games in 1986.) Zim was a Christian guy, and pushed me towards the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which I avoided, although I now wish I had participated. I truly admire people who live their faith in their everyday lives. I know his beautiful daughter developed cancer and they went all over the world trying to get her treatment. You know the phrase "only the good die young".
I actually dabbled in a couple of fraternities. The first was Phi Eta Sigma, the freshman honors fraternity. It was really just a label as the only thing we did was have a dinner and induction ceremony. Once in Montana (at UM in Missoula), in 1975, I joined a Christian-based Lutheran fraternity called Gamma Delta. It was a life-changing experience. I lived in a house with 8 other Christian college students for a while, but it certainly wasn't anything like a monastery or other such religious institution. It was a bunch of regular guys who were Christians, and we made a lot of mistakes too. I was President of this chapter in 1976-77. We had cool retreats, cross country skiing, camping, rafting and the like. I really learned to appreciate living in Montana through them.
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