Ralph C. Crouse

CROUSE, EDMUNDS, DEVAULT, JOHNSON, RHINE, VAN HOUTEN

Posted By: Treva Patterson (email)
Date: 5/18/2006 at 21:20:26

Winterset Madisonian
1968

RALPH CROUSE, WINTERSET DIES

Retired Business Man Here Was Nationally Known Engineer

Ralph C. Crouse of Winterset, a nationally known electrical engineer and retired Winterset business man, died Sunday, May 5, at his home here. He was 82 years of age.

Mr. Crouse was a native of Prescott, in Adams county, where he was born Dec. 13, 1885. He was a son of Clinton S. and Clara Edmunds Crouse.

He was married Sept. 6, 1911 at Pitzer to Lois R. DeVault. Her death occurred in 1951 in Inglewood, Calif. He was married a second time, in 1954, to Ina V. Johnson, at Santa Barbara, Calif. She survives him.

Mr. Crouse attended high school in Prescott and Corning and 1909 received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Iowa State college at Ames.

He spent nearly 10 years in development engineering and as factory superintendent for such companies as General Electric and Western Electric of Chicago and St. Louis.

For 20 years, from 1918 to 1938, he operated his own business, the Crouse Electric company, in Winterset. At the same time he helped with the training of returning World War I veterans. He also spent two years in engineering work for the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation.

After 1938 he was employed with the Wickes Engineer and Construction company of Des Moines as consulting engineer and superintendent in construction of nation-wide wystem of facilities for the Civil Aeronautics administration.

From 1941 until 1947 he was employed at Washington, D.C. by the Civil Aeronautics administration, traveling over the nation as construction engineer and supervising maintenance for the federal airways. In 1947, he was transferred to Los Angeles, where he remained until his retirement in 1959. During this time he was chief of plant and structural maintenance for 11 western states.

Since 1959 he had again made his home in Winterset.

Mr. Crouse had joined the First Methodist church in Prescott when he was 19 years of age. He was a member of the Za-Ga-Zig Shrine temple of Des Moines, Des Moines consistory, a 50-year member of the Masonic lodge of Winterset, member of the Order of Eastern Star, past chanceller commander of the Winterset Knights of Phythias, and past president of the Winterset Rotary club.

He is survived by his wife; two sons, Ralph C. Crouse, Jr. of Nevada and Robert L. Crouse of Minneapolis; two stepsons, Lloyd H. Johnson of Winterset and Aaron M. Johnson of San Diego, Calif.; eight grandchildren; two strep-grandchildren; seven great grandchildren; and two sisters, Mrs. Alma A. Rhine of Osceola and Mrs. Clara Van Houten of Napa, Ida.

Funeral services were to be held this Wednesday at 2 p.m. from the First Methodist church of Winterset, conducted by the pastor, the Rev. E. K. Burham. Burial was to be made in the Winterset cemetery with Masonic ritual at the grave-side.