Pity newcomers who sat down to a Stevenson family dinner. Butter a dinner roll and it would disappear. Prepare another, and it, too, disappeared, to the delight of everyone in the know.
The vanishing bread roll was a little joke played by Ray Stevenson, known for his love of family, math, coaching and Gold Wing motorcycles.
“He was funny, sarcastic, athletic, charming and had such good-looking children,” said his daughter, Kelli Jackson. “He was a storyteller, always holding everyone’s attention. If he made you laugh, he’d say the punch line four more times so you wouldn’t stop laughing.”
For extreme fun, he suggested hard work.
At the family cabin on an island in the San Juans, his children would pile wood one weekend, then move the pile to a new location the next time they visited.
“He grew up on a farm,” said his son, Brett Stevenson. “He loved working. We’d work nonstop on that wood pile.”
Stevenson melded compassion with discipline in his career as a coach and school administrator. He attended Idaho State University and the University of Washington, was dean of students at Ingraham High School in Seattle, as well as the sophomore football coach under head coach Tony Gasparovich.
He was also vice principal at both Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood high schools.
Her father would remind his four children that he didn’t raise any stupid sons or daughters.
“He would come home upset because he had to kick a kid out of school for doing drugs and he would say, ‘I’m so lucky my kids would never do this and are smart and independent enough to make the right choice,’” Jackson said. “He would be sad because he knew the kind of homes some of the kids came from and he wanted to help them.”
Her father encouraged his children to be good role models.
“People laugh when I tell them that I am the ‘loser’ in my family,” Jackson said. “My oldest brother, Brett, owns a television production studio and an advertising agency; Ken owns his own construction company; my two older brothers own a building together; Paige is the senior assistant attorney general (for Washington state) and I only work for the largest, most successful software company in the entire world.”
Her father, 75, died of natural causes Oct. 22. He was born on Halloween in Bancroft, Idaho, to Kenneth and Letha Stevenson, and grew up with three brothers, Wayne, Reid and Odell. He excelled at football at Pocatello High School and served in the Air Force.
He met his wife, Elsie, at a barn dance.
“They continued their courtship for 52 years,” Jackson said. “They still had date night every Friday, or so they told me, so I wouldn’t drop my kids off for them to baby-sit. They were always a great team.”
Ray Stevenson is survived by Elsie; children Brett and Nancy Stevenson, Ken Stevenson, Paige and Steve Dietrich, Kelli and Troy Jackson; and seven grandchildren.
His dad would drop by his construction sites, said Ken Stevenson.
“My Dad, with his mechanical mind, walked around looking at all the work going into the projects,” Ken Stevenson said. “He would always find something amiss and point it out to me, and grin, like he knew I already saw it.”
Punishment for having a smart mouth or not minding mom was always yard work, big time, his son said.
“I know my brother, and mostly me, had the yard looking like Buckingham Palace gardens most of the time. He always encouraged me and others to persevere, be tough and never quit.”
His said his father had a razor-sharp internal aptitude test in his mind. He could sit down with someone and peg their potential, and what they would be good at in life. The elder Stevenson loved his Seattle Seahawks charter seats, riding his motorcycle, and sipping morning coffee with other enthusiasts at Everett Powersports.
Retired for 20 years, he hung out with a group of World War II veterans who fancied camping in the worst spots they could find.
As a vice principal, Stevenson wasn’t opposed to telling a kid he should quit school and join the Army. Often they returned and thanked Mr. Stevenson because they got their lives together in the military.
Teasing that she was raised by June and Ward Cleaver, daughter Paige Dietrich said her dad fostered a strong sense of right and wrong in her. He could fix anything and was there when her Fiat broke down. And her father had many talents, such as making cotton candy at birthday parties.
“He must have helped me move five times,” Dietrich said. “I suppose my fondest memories are of us sitting in a room reading our own books. We weren’t talking, but sharing a pastime we both loved. He was an avid reader, and when he was engrossed in a book, you could be standing right next to him talking and he wouldn’t hear a word you said.”
After their father died, the family heard from hundreds of former students and athletes, who said Ray Stevenson shaped their lives.
There are few higher compliments.
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