STEVEN RUSSELL CROSBY

     Steve, our second son, was born and raised in the 49^th State of Alaska in 1964. For the first few years after his birth, the family lived in the suburbs of Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska. When he was some 8 years of age, the family moved to an area approximately 45 miles north of Anchorage, into the lower Matanuska Valley not far from where his mother grew up.
     In the early summer of 1976, just before he turned 12, the family moved out of Alaska to an apple orchard located in the Wenatchee Valley, in Central Washington State. This area is east of the Cascade Mountains and is considered to be semi-arid, whereas the West Side of the mountains is subject to heavy rainfall and cooler weather.
     Steve grew to adulthood on the family orchard. He settled in fairly well to the local Junior and Senior High School Programs. His major interest in High School was in his Metal Shop Classes. There, under good instruction, he got his good foundation in both Welding and Machine Shop Skills. At that time he thought that perhaps he would like to become a Machinist.
     Steve did not want to attend a college, but instead did a short stint in the Navy. He had hoped to move into Machinist Training after Basic Training, but that program was already filled for this time period and he was unable to do so. After completing minimum time in the Navy, he came back to Wenatchee for a while and worked for us in our Orchard and for a couple of other orchardists as well. His heart was not in orchard work, so he went in search of other work.
     He next went to work for a couple of different welding/fabrication shops over the next few months, but this work type of work was of short duration just then. Shortly after this experience, he moved to California to try his luck in a new area, and went to work for his brother-in-law's family, again doing fabrication work. While down there, he apparently did a lot of technical book reading on his own, and learned a great deal about plan designing and related skills for machine shop level work.
     In the fall 1992, Steve returned to live in Wenatchee Valley, along with his sister and her family. The economy was such at that time in California, that neither he nor his sister and her husband could continue working for this company. He, along with his brother, sister, and brother-in-law, came together to form a loose partnership to try their hand at a business venture, the Manufacture & Sale of the Branch Bender, a tree spreading device designed by Dave Crosby. During that time period, Steve assumed the position of Designer and Prototype Toolmaker for the equipment necessary to manufacture this tree-spreading device. We were amazed at his expertise and skill in this area. After building the Prototype Machine for one size of Bender, his drawings were sufficiently good enough for a local machine shop to tool the dies for the other two machine sizes. Somehow the timing for this business was not right, and their small business failed some three years later, after a valiant attempt to succeed.
     In October of1992, he met his future wife, Linda gray, whom he married  in August 1994. She brought to the marriage two pre-teenaged children, Rick, 8  and Jeni, 10.  After residing in rental housing for a few years, they were finally able to buy their first home in 1999, a nice doublewide that they placed in a good manufactured home park.
     After Steve had finished his work on the Branch Bender Machines in early 1993, he went back to work for a local fabrication shop for a while. Dissatisfied with the on again, off again nature of the work that the fabrication shop afforded him, with its uncertain wages, he next tried his hand with his own fabrication business. Again he hit a snag with the volatile economy of this area which soon forced him to abandon his own business. 5 Cross B Enterprises did employ him for a time for the fabrication of the ATC Bin Trailer that was sold for a while. Once this work was over he hired back on at Far West Iron Works, the fabrication firm he still works for today. His expertise has grown in the welding and fabrication field with this company, something he had aptly demonstrated earlier, by the number and types of pieces of equipment he has manufacture for the 5 Cross B Ranch & Enterprises, and for our own personal use in the past few years. Steve is extremely talented and very meticulous in all his work.
     For relaxation Steve turned the artistic side of his talents to woodturning. As a teenager, he had purchased an old worn metal lathe, which he spent hours rebuilding. He decided that perhaps this metal lathe could be put to better use as a wood lathe. It was no longer accurate enough for metal work, but far more accurate than most wood lathes. He has since turned out many and varied pieces, mostly  jars, goblets, boxes and bottles - which can be viewed at his web site, Bear Spirit Creations.
     In 2000, after he and his wife, Linda ostensibly purchased a computer for working with digital images, and trying his hand at running some of the photo programs and connecting to the Internet, he got hooked!! He purchased various manuals on computer secrets, and web page design and has devoured them. With the computer as his primary "recreational vehicle", he is dabbling heavily in Web Site design work. When he felt he was ready, he took over the maintenance chores of the 5 Cross B Web Site from his brother, and then moved to design and placement work of a complete makeover of the 5 Cross B Web Site.