Steve R Sharpe

I was born May 22, 1916, to Roy and Viola (Haxton) Sharpe, near Chase, Kansas, where I attended grade and high school. My specialty was basketball and football. Our team won the county and regional tournaments. We lost the state tournament, but no Chase team has gone to the tournament since.

I attended the College of Emporia where I was captain of the basketball team. I graduated in 1939 with a degree in Business Administration. I taught in high school in Stafford and St. John, Kansas until World War II.

I joined the Navy in 1942 and was assigned to a position of Federal Telegrapher and Radio Censorship in New York City and later to the same organization in Hawaii. This required a Top Security clearance.

In 1946 I accepted a position with the State Employment Office in Parsons, Kansas, where I met and married Francena Lewman. I transferred to the Chanute office in 1947, where our children were born. I accepted a position with Boeing Company in 1952 as a Personnel Representative and Recruiter, traveling over the eastern half of the U.S. seeking new employees. I retired from Boeing in 1971 and accepted a position as Administrative Assistant for the City of Wichita, retiring in 1981.

We have two children. Nancy Marie was born in 1948, has graduated from the Wesley School of Nursing as a Registered Nurse. Randy Dean, born in 1950, graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in Electrical Engineering.

After my retirement we equipped our Ford Van so we could sleep, cook and eat in it, and started out to see all the States we hadn’t visited, going to Wisconsin then across the Northern States to Montana and back to Colorado for the summer. We spent summers in Colorado, part of the winters in Arizona.

After a few years of this travel we became interested in genealogy, traveling from coast to coast where we found lots of information and visited with many relatives we didn’t know we had. I wrote a book on my Sharpe Ancestry and gave copies to the Lyons Museum, Wichita Library, all my brothers and sister, and several nieces and nephews.

In 1994 we sold our home and moved into an apartment for four years, then decided we were old enough to move into the Independent Living facility at Park West Plaza.

(note: Steve and Francena moved to the Presbyterian Manor in early 2010, where he was living upon his death.)

Survivors are his wife, Francena; a daughter, Nancy (Bill) Gooden, Wichita; a son, Randy (Rita) Sharpe, Lawrence, Kansas; granddaughter Cyndi (Mark) Winter, Wichita; granddaughter Tiffany (Blake) McCrabb, Edmond, OK; granddaughter Jennifer (Marcel) Templet, Denver, CO; granddaughter Abigail (soon to be (Michael) Dunlap), Raleigh, NC; step-granddaughter Toni Gooden; step-granddaughter Alicia (Chris) Lollar; step-granddaughter Whitney (Jose) Gutierrez; four great-grandchildren: Gage, Maci and Avery Winter and Molly McCrabb; sister Doris Kennedy, Hutchinson; brother Don (Marion) Sharpe, Tulsa, OK; brother James (Ella Mae) Sharpe, Mulvane; sister-in-law Francis Sharpe, St. Joseph, MO. Preceding Steve in death were brother Dean and wife Geraldine Sharpe, Hill City; brother William Sharpe, St. Joseph MO; brother Harold and wife Marjorie Sharpe, Duncan, OK; brother-in-law Alvin Kennedy, Hutchinson; parents Roy and Viola, Chase; and numerous cousins, nieces and nephews.

Memorials:

Trinity Presbyterian Church

2258 Marigold

Wichita, Kansas 67201