Bob & Marcia Stanger

Bob was born in Ogden, Utah.  Of Scottish, English, and German descent, his Dad was a welder and his Mom a housewife and Bob was the youngest of three children, with an older brother and sister.  When Bob was in the first grade, the family relocated to San Francisco when his Dad moved out to work in the shipyards.  Bob grew up in San Francisco, going to McKinley Grammar School, Everett Junior High, and Polytechnic High School, where he was very involved in sports.  He lettered in both track and basketball.
Following high school, Bob entered a four-year apprenticeship in 1955 to be a mechanic at United Airlines.  It proved to be a good move as he remained with them until he retired in 1995 after 40 years of service, all in San Francisco.  During his career, he worked in provisioning (determining parts for planes), purchasing and supply, becoming a Service Center Stores Manager, before returning to the Maintenance Center, and finally finishing his career in the Composite Repair Department.  One of the highlights of his career was getting to meet Arnold Palmer up close and personal when his plane was brought in for repair.  He also spent a couple of years in engineering and a year in plane overhaul and had an opportunity to spend four weeks in France on a special project when United bought the Caravel airplane.  Bob and his first wife were married 18 years, and had 3 children, two boys and a girl.  He was originally supposed to spend 7 days in France and be back in time for his daughter’s birth.  As luck would have it, his daughter was born while he was in-flight to France, and it was when he landed in Paris and saw a message across the reader board at the airport that he discovered his daughter had arrived early. Bob now has 6 grandchildren, four of whom are in college with one of the grandsons just starting a full scholarship at Princeton. Marcia was born in Englewood, New Jersey, the third of four children, with an older sister and brother and a younger sister.  Marcia’s Mom was a housewife and her Dad a patent agent in New York City.  And Marcia is a DAR (daughter of the American Revolution) able to trace history back on both sides of the family to just after the Mayflower arrived.  She grew up in New Jersey and following high school, went to Fairleigh Dickenson University in Teaneck, N.J. where she achieved a B.S. in Mathematics and also staked her claim to fame as a world-class fencer.  She competed in Poland in 1963 in the world championship and in 2004 was inducted into the FDU Sports Hall of Fame. After college, Marcia went to work in New York City as a software programmer for an insurance company where she worked for 5 years.  She then moved to California and had three job offers, choosing the one with United Airlines as a programmer in 1967.  On her first day at work, she became a management employee (was one of the few women in management at SFO) and worked on Supply Systems – ordering parts for maintenance.  Marcia remained with United until she retired in 1999.  So by now, you’ve probably figured out that Bob and Marcia met at United Airlines (he was going down the stairs as she was coming up the escalator). In March of 1973, Bob and Marcia married in San Mateo and honeymooned in Hawaii at the Turtle Bay Hilton where they saw Jack Benny.  Bob and Marcia celebrated their 32nd anniversary this year.  Their favorite current pastimes include golf (which Marcia took up after meeting Bob), travel, socializing, and road trips (guess after all that time with United, air travel isn’t that exciting anymore).   Shortly after Bob and Marcia married, they decided to get a dog.  Marcia wanted a collie and Bob a Brittany spaniel, and somehow they ended up instead with a soft-coated Wheaten terrier.  And thus began a love affair with Wheaten and with dog shows. It began with the Fremont Obedience Dog Training Club in 1974 where Bob became President.  And they had their first show quality Wheaten in 1976.  They did all their own training and over the years have had a number of champions.  In 1979, they moved from Fremont to Hillsborough to be closer to work and Bob’s mother Isabelle moved in with them.  The three of them got very involved in dog shows and raising the Wheatens.  Currently, they are no longer showing dogs, but still have 3 soft-coated Wheatens, two who are 11 and one who is 7.  Tedi, a female, now retired from shows, was one of the top ten in the nation in 1996, rising to show in the Westminster dog show in New York, the cream of dog shows.  She won best female Wheaten in the show.  Tedi was also the top winning wheaten female in the U.S. that same year.  A prior Wheaten, Piper, won Wheaten Obedience Training dog of the year in the U.S. The Stangers moved to Blacklake about 5 years ago, but first became acquainted with Blacklake when they came for a golf getaway at the condos 20 – 25 years ago.  Looking ahead to retirement, a few years after marriage, they purchased property in Arnold, up near the Sierras where many of their friends also bought property.  They would rent a cabin and go up for golf tournaments frequently.  But as their friends started moving there and discovered how rough winters could be and the isolation in bad weather and remoteness from medical facilities, Bob and Marcia began a search elsewhere for retirement property.  They started looking from Windsor to San Diego and over into Arizona.  One night, Bob was looking on the Internet and saw that Blacklake had new homes advertised on the golf course.  So he responded with the model and location he wanted, only to find that all the homes in the Estates were sold.  So they came down to look at the Legends and on the way out saw the sign for the Oaks and decided they liked a couple of houses there.  They put a deposit down and kept on looking.  But as they reviewed housing prices in other areas, and looked at the weather here and the wonderful people in the area, they decided to stop looking elsewhere. And like most of us, they have never regretted their decision.