Leon Raney

Leon Raney, 85, of Brookings, passed away on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, at Peaceful Pines Assisted Living in Brookings.
A time of fellowship will be held on Thursday, Oct. 17, from 2 until 4 p.m. at the Meadow Green Community Building located at 2121 Monarch Lane in Brookings. Following Leon's wishes, he will be interred at the family plot in Garden of Memories Cemetery in Charleston, Arkansas.
Leon Raney was born in a small Arkansas town near the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. He finished Charleston High School in 1956, and enrolled at (what is now) the University of Central Arkansas, where he earned a bachelor's degree. He later studied to become a university librarian, and earned degrees from Louisiana State University and Indiana University.
Leon retired from South Dakota State University in 1996. A short time later he took a "temporary" job as an over-the-road truck driver at A & A Express, based in Brandon, SD. Over the following fifteen years, he logged over two million miles, eventually driving in all 48 adjoining states. He retired, again, in 2011.
Leon married Mary Wilson, his high school sweetheart in 1958, when they both were 19 years old. Mary earned a bachelor's degree in English at Arkansas State University. She taught freshman English at SDSU for many years before becoming an editor at Special Teams Inc., in Brookings.
Leon and Mary have two sons. The oldest, Joel, teaches at a Charter School in St. Paul, MN. The youngest, Jason, is a medical technologist, based in Sacramento, CA.
Leon and Mary have four grandchildren, including a set of twins. Two of the grandsons graduated from Lincoln High School in Sioux Falls and are currently students at SDSU.
Leon was a lifelong poetry hobbyist. When the mood struck, he would write entirely for fun and to communicate with people he met, sometimes with the collaboration of Mary. Virtually all the poems have been given to the person they were written about, or discarded in a nearby wastebasket.