George Ralph Crane
submitted by: Aspen Crane
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My great grandpa was George Ralph Crane. He was a hard worker who loved his family, God, and serving others. George had many experiences that helped him become a better person, and I’m excited to tell you about him in this essay.
My great grandpa was born on September 13th in 1925 in Ovid, Idaho, the same day that my dad was born. He grew up in a lot of different places in the Bear Lake Valley, including Ovid, Montpelier, Georgetown Canyon, and Bennington, Idaho. He had 5 siblings. In the early years of my great grandpa’s childhood, his dad was a sheep rancher. So that he could take care of his family, he worked any other job that he could. Most of the food that they ate came from their own crops and animals. When my great grandpa was a kid, most of his childhood was in the Great Depression. They didn’t have any money, so they traded for stuff they needed. They were blessed because they had a small livestock farm with some animals, which included a few cows, chickens, geese, and one or two pigs. They milked the cows and they used the cows’ milk to make cheese and butter. They also sold some of the wheat that they grew so that they could buy salt, sugar, and food for the animals. It was very important to shoot a deer so that they would have enough meat to survive the winter.
One day when my great grandpa was a kid he was the first one in his family ready for Sunday School. His mom got him dressed in a made-over coat and told him to go over to the Buehler’s house to show them his new outfit. The boys at the Buehler’s house had been taking a bath in a tub in the kitchen before he got there. They started joking around. One of the boys took the buttons off my great grandpa’s coat. Then he backed away trying to get away from them, but he ran into the tub and flipped over into the tub. He didn’t make it to Sunday School.
From spring to fall, they camped in the mountains so that they could tend to the sheep. The rest of the time they lived in a log cabin that my great grandpa’s dad built with logs that he cut down from the forest. When my great grandpa was eleven, his dad died from strep throat. That meant that my great grandpa had to work for someone. For half of the year, he lived with another family and worked for them so that his mom didn’t have to provide for him. During the summer he worked for other sheep ranchers and sent all his earnings back to his family. During his childhood, he always had to ride a horse to school. During high school, he ran cross country and played football.
World War Two was also happening when he was in high school. When he was 17, he convinced his mom to let him join the Army Air Corps. After he graduated high school, he passed the Army’s requirements to become a pilot for the Air Corps.
My great grandpa joined the Air Corps because he wanted to help serve his country. In 1943 he started his military training as a pilot. He decided to change from a pilot to a bombardier because he got really bad motion sickness flying the planes. He became a bombardier on a B29 bomber airplane and was sent to war in the Pacific. When he left for the war, he flew in his B29 from Nebraska to an airbase on an island in the Pacific Ocean. Part of his job was to plan the way to fly there. So he planned the flight so they would fly right over his hometown, Montpelier, Idaho. Part of being a bombardier is being able to drop bombs in exactly the right spot from really high up in the air. My great grandpa wrote a note and put it inside a small padded pouch about the size of a wallet, and he tied a long yellow streamer to it to act like a parachute. He wanted to drop the note so it would land somewhere close to Montpelier, and he was sure someone would find it. From my great grandpa’s autobiography, this is what the note said. “Noon 27 June. Hello Bear Lakers, Just on my way overseas. See you again soon - call my family at 172 J to give them regards…Lt George R Crane.” About a month later, he got a letter from his mom that said she got the pouch about 30 minutes after he dropped it from his plane. She said it landed in the middle of town right by the bank. During World War Two, he flew bombing missions throughout 1945. Most of his missions were 18-20 hours long.
After WWII he went to school at the University of Idaho. That’s where he met my great grandma Crane. They got married when they were both still going to school at the University of Idaho and started a family. He graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in physics. Right after he graduated, he fought in the Korean War. This time he was a bombardier on a B26 bomber airplane. After the Korean War, the Army Air Corps became the Air Force. The Air Force decided he needed more education, and he got a Master’s Degree in Nuclear Engineering.
For the next few years, he developed engine technology and navigation systems for a bunch of different Air Force planes. The Air Force sent him to school again, and he got an MBA degree and another Master’s degree in Engineering Management.
For the rest of his Air Force career, he worked on and developed nuclear reactor power sources, and most of his projects were designing nuclear power sources to be used in outer space. He developed the first nuclear reactor that was put in space and other projects for NASA. One of the nuclear power sources that he developed for satellites is called a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, also called an RTG. That is the same generator used on the Voyager 1 spacecraft. That spacecraft was launched in 1977. Right now the Voyager 1 is about 15 billion miles away from Earth, and it is the farthest away man-made object. It is so far away that if a light flashed there, it would take 22 and a half hours for us to see it on Earth. It was also the first spacecraft to fly past Jupiter and Saturn, and it took the pictures used in school books for many years. The power plant that my great grandpa designed is still providing power to the Voyager 1 after 47 years in outer space, and NASA is still getting signals from the spacecraft.
I’m proud to be George Ralph Crane’s great-granddaughter. He was a hard worker that loved his family and the Lord. Everything that he went through had an important impact on his life. He learned so many lessons that he passed on to my grandpa, my dad, and now to me. I hope you enjoyed learning about my great grandpa George Ralph Crane.