03/23/2026
Ranger Airfield lost someone that many of you never knew, but you’ve felt the results of his life whether you realize it or not.
Bob Green passed away in Ranger at the age of 93.
I’ve known of Bob since I was 5, back when this was just an old grass field with no airshow, an old open hangar, and a dog on a cable. In my early days, I saw him as a bit of an outsider, not because of anything he ever did to me, but because there were always a few “talkers” who had something to say about him. What I came to understand later is simple. Bob was a doer and he worked hard at it. And doers tend to make talkers uncomfortable.
His life started hard. When he was 5, his mother died in Arizona while their family was trying to make it to California during the Depression in search of work. They buried her just west of Buckeye, and turned around, back to Texas. It’s the kind of story you’d expect to read in The Grapes of Wrath, except it was his real life.
As a teen, he turned 17 on a hillside in Korea, in combat. That willingness to step into difficult things was present whether it was overseas in Korea and in Vietnam, or at the local City Hall. He was awarded the Purple Heart.
In 2005, when I was 18, I crashed his powered parachute weeks before graduating high school. It put me in the hospital for 10 days, ended my plans for military service, and left me with a bad knee. Bob didn’t owe me anything (in fact I owed him for his machine) but he showed up anyway. Not with money, but with guidance, perspective, and steady support. Teaching the importance of investing in assets and people, and instilling you have to be okay with being the most hated person in the room. "If you can't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." One of his traits I really appreciated, was how he would say “that son of a bitch!” Not said with bitterness or even hate, but with a kind of humor that conveyed you’re going to run into a few in life, and they’re not going to get the best of you.
In 2007, when the airfield needed help, Bob was the first person I went to. At the time, Ranger had an appointed airport board that hadn’t met in 18 months. The place was drifting, and I knew it wouldn’t survive that way.
Bob listened, then went to his wife, Margaret, who was on the city council. Soon after, I was sitting at their kitchen table, the same table where they had helped countless people over the decades. Bob made it clear that the future under the current path was certain, but with me, the airfield at least had a chance.
Margaret went to bat, the board was removed, and six months later, we held the first airshow. They both helped serve the 9 briskets my father and I smoked. A few months later Ranger Airfield Foundation was established.
Margaret passed in 2023 at 88. Bob followed her last Thursday.
And in a way only life can write, on the very morning Bob took his last breath, the concrete contractor for the first private builder at the airfield started work at sunrise. Bob knew the work was starting, having spent an hour on the phone with Dad the day prior. He lived to see that this place, now owned by the Foundation, still has a shot.
Most of you who come to the airshow never knew his name. That’s okay. Bob wasn’t interested in recognition, he was interested in results. But if you’ve ever enjoyed a day out here, watched airplanes come and go, or believed this airfield was worth something, you’ve experienced part of what he helped make possible.
He wasn’t family by blood, but pieces of who he was live on in me, and I’d bet in anyone else who really knew him.
That’s about the best kind of legacy a man can leave.
We’ll be spreading his ashes over our grass this October.
