Memorial
Ronald Lee Luckow died at home in Sun City, AZ on February 15, 2021. Per his wishes he has been cremated. No Services will be held at this time. Cedar Memorial is assisting the family with arrangements.
Ron, “Ronny” as a child, loved family, food, and football. To avoid questions concerning orders of preference, Ron also enjoyed Thanksgiving and other holiday gatherings involving all three. Ron also loved basketball and cars, the latter his one material self-indulgence: he traded cars every other year. Ron would happily tell you about his 1961 Oldsmobile 88, the 1965 Chevrolet Impala, or the cherry red 1967 Chevrolet he bought new, and teaching his toddler to say, “pretty red Chevy.” Shopping for cars with Ron was one part eighteen holes of golf and one-part covert tactical warfare. Ron was very proud of his children, but his grandchildren were the focus of his adoration, his time, attention, and generosity.
Ron relished simple pleasures like watching partridges graze, reading the Arizona Republic on the patio on a cool morning in the sun and shooting the breeze with passing neighbors or visiting family. He loved peach cobbler and his daughter’s beef stroganoff. There were exactly two seasons: Football and Basketball and he was an Iowa Hawkeye fan through thick and thin. Ron played guard on his high school football team and when he hit someone, “they knew they’d been hit.” A true Midwesterner, he had long been used to hard work and was among other things, a milk truck driver and television repairman (including once for Doris Day in Hollywood). He held three jobs at once to support his young family at one time. In the early days of mainframe computing, he became an operator and keypunch typist, advancing into management information systems. Ron remained in that field until he retired from the Hon Company in Muscatine, Iowa. Ron then lived in Marion, Iowa before settling in Sun City, where he lived until his death.
Ronald Lee Luckow was born on March 14, 1943 in rural Sac County, Iowa to Lawrence and Wilma (Poen) Luckow, the third of nine children. He walked to a one-room schoolhouse until late grade school and graduated from Sac Community High School in 1961. After attending trade school in Omaha, he married Glenda Carnine. The couple lived in the Sac City area until moving to Los Angeles in 1965 and returned to the Des Moines area, living in Waukee, Iowa until 1976. Ron and his family later lived in Lincoln and then Norfolk, Nebraska. In 1980, Ron moved to Muscatine, where he married Connie Martin in 1985. He is survived by his daughter Lynette (Steven) Stickney of Marion, son Lance (Jin) Luckow, of Cedar Grove, New Jersey, grandchildren Lee Stickney, Samantha and Tyler Martin, sister Marilyn Cates of Storm Lake and brothers Lyle (Nancy) Luckow of Grimes and Lennis (Penny) Luckow of Litchfield Park, AZ as well as numerous nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grand nephews. He was predeceased by his parents, brothers Robert, Randall and Steven, and sisters, Jean and Deanne.
To honor Ron, donations can be made to his favorite charities: Smile Train: http://smiletrain.org, Phoenix Children’s Hospital: https://www.phoenixchildrens.org/, and St. Mary’s Food Pantry in Phoenix: https://www.firstfoodbank.org.