Disowned and Discarded: The Secret Shame of Lee Stranahan

Written by: LiberalGrouch on February 6, 2013.on February 21, 2013.

It’s a cliche, but Lee Stranahan is a riddle, wrapped inside a mystery, wrapped inside an enigma.

Even the things you and I take for granted, the basic information — family members, kids, marriages, birth, death — these are all obscured by a fog of lies in Lee Stranahan’s obscure background.

Lee Stranahan mentions his late father from time to time.

Click to see full size.

That bit of info is telling because it makes Richard Allan “Dick” Stranahan easy to trace. Of course, Lee aids in this effort by writing about his father’s passing.

As we were packing up our house to leave New Mexico in October 2010, I got a call from my brother and just the way he said hello I knew was going on. He’d gotten word that my father just a few hours to live and that if my brother wanted to see him, he should come to his bedside right away. I’m very glad that Ken was there and able to comfort my father in his last few hours. My father couldn’t but my brother told me that when he arrived, his eyes were frightened.

For the next couple of hours, my brother gently stroked my father’s forehead and arms and spoke quietly to him. He also phoned a number of people; friends of my father from his long career as a golf pro and family. Although my dad couldn’t speak, he could listen and Ken said it seemed to help my dad find some peace.

Lauren, our kids and I were getting lunch at Panda Express when I got the call. He told me was going on and I stepped outside the restaurant, where I finally got to speak to my father after such a long time.

I told him that I loved him very much and that although I knew he hadn’t wanted to speak to me, I knew he loved me very much, too. I told him that I had thought of him often even though we both had made decisions that had separated us. I said he had had a good life, doing the things he’d wanted to do since he was young and how that had taught me to follow my own path and not to worry, that our family would go on. I said that I knew he’d done his best and I that I had, too. And I said I loved him, again.

A few hours later, Ken called to say that my dad was gone.

A poignant telling of a sad tale. But there are some interesting things about this father and son relationship that Lee has not written about.

The Father left quite a paper trail. He was even what one could call “borderline famous.” His passing in October 2010 was noted in Golf Magazines and newspapers.

A check of his father’s background lists quite a number of folks as relatives.

And none of them is named Lee.

Now, why would that be? Why would online background check after online background check find no mention whatsoever of Lee Stranahan as being a member of the Richard Allan Stranahan family?

First, let’s establish that Richard Allan Stranahan is the individual Lee mentions as the PGA Hall of Fame Curator.

Again, click the image to see it full size.

OK, we have established through this link that Richard A. Stranahan was who Lee says he was. And we establish through THIS link to a story written in 2000 that Dick had a wife named Bee.

Now, armed with that info, let’s check into some of the “people search” websites and see what we find.

It seems that Richard and Bee had one child. And his name was not Lee, but Ken.  So let’s check out Ken.

So, we check out Ken Stranahan, and here’s what we find. A list of the same relatives.

And what do we find on other people search sites?

I can find NOWHERE a mention that Lee Stranahan is related to this family!

I find a lot of mentions on old dweeb forums about Lee’s brother Ken.

I find Lee mentioning his Mom and Dad.  He even tried an abortive attempt at creating a website for his mom… http://bee.stranahan.com

I find a lot of mentions of LEE talking about his BROTHER…

But where is the evidence that LEE is part of the Richard Allan Stranahan Family?

Nothing on Richard’s Facebook page.

Nothing on Ken’s PeopleSmart background check.

Nothing on his Mom’s US Search check.

Nothing on her People Lookup check.

Nothing on this profile report.

And not a word on any of Dad’s background reports.

I began looking into this tortured relationship yesterday evening at around 6pm. It wasn’t until 8:30 this morning that I finally found a shred of evidence that proves Lee Stranahan is included in this family.  A 2005 blog post from Ken Stranahan. It’s titled, “My Brother Lee’s Cute Kids” and has a picture of Shane, Olivia and Jack.

I can find nothing else that ties Lee Stranahan to the greater Stranahan brood other than this one mention by his brother 8 years ago.

So, what happened? What caused former professional golfer, former curator of the PGA World Golf Hall of Fame, Richard Allan Stranahan, to disown his son to the point where the child is not mentioned in any of the family’s official history? Was it something so horrible that his own mother, Bee, would follow her husband into the nearly unheard of practice of not mentioning a child of yours? And with all the information available about Ken Stranahan, Lee’s far-more-successful brother online, why can we find only one 8 year old reference by him to even having a brother?

Might it have something to do with Lee’s lying? Might it be the pornography? Might it be the crappy way he treated his first wife, actually having his girlfriend move in with him in his first wife’s house? Might it be the lawsuit against his current wife’s father? Might it be the fact — the proven FACT — that Lee sold his wife like a set of encyclopedias to whoever had $299 to come to his home studio (where the kids were being homeschooled) or $650 to have Lauren personally “deliver” the prints in a two-hour session? Wink-wink? Might it be the years and years and decades of scammery and lies? The inability to get past the 8th grade? Stating publicly that he went to college at age 15, which is true, but he only lasted six months at one and less than three at the other? The fraud? The stealing from his supporters? A lot of this happened after Mom and Dad died, of course, but much of it happened before.

Is this why Ken has nothing to do with him anymore? A guy trying to lead a clean life, ashamed of his brother’s duplicity and double-dealing and right wing conservative lying?

Is this why so much of Lee’s personal life remains a secret? There’s no record of Lee ever getting married, other than his to his first wife, the unfortunate Katherine who he wed two weeks after meeting her in 1989.  Any records about his marriage to Lauren? I can’t find any. I can find Shane’s birth record because he was married to Katherine at the time.  I can find no birth records for Olivia, Blackjack, Van or Ezra, and I can find neither a birth nor death record for his daughter, Collette, born the same day as Ezra.

Lee Stranahan paints himself as a hero of the common man. He is in the struggle up to his elbows, he says, as he strives for a just outcome for the good people of Steubenville, Ohio, in the rape case being waged in that tiny, Ohio town.  People in that burg want to believe him because he says nice things about them.  But one has to ask… if his own family wants nothing to do with him, if his current family is being secreted away behind shaded windows in a Dallas townhouse, never to emerge unless accompanied by Mommy and Daddy, if he brags about his children being “unsocialized,” if one cannot find a picture of his current wife, if she is his wife, in which she is not naked or enjoying some other man’s penis, if he lies about such trivial things such as whether or not he stopped shooting porn 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago or 20 years ago, if he can’t keep his stories straight about a simple thing like a rape threat he alleged was made against his wife, which turned into a rape threat against his wife and kids, which turned into a rape threat against HIM, his wife and kids, which wound up as a person mocking a non-existent rape threat made by someone else, if a person raises money based on that threat because he is being forced to move to protect his family, gets the whole right wing blogosphere involved in helping him raise those funds, and then… months later, he hasn’t moved any further than from the living room to the kitchen, a man who will release the name of an alleged rape victim in the George Zimmerman case because it suits his masters at Breitbart.com for him to do so, and now you want to believe him because he says nice things about Steubenville when people who know him realize that his only intent in this case is to make the group Anonymous look bad — and if it were Anonymous supporting the city and the establishment, Stranahan would be embracing the poor, devastated Jane Doe and then he’d sell “Occupied Unmasked” DVDs on the steps of the courthouse during the trial?  This is a man you want to support?

Words of advice, Steubenville.

Nobody knows you like your family knows you.

And this man’s family wanted nothing to do with him.

At 9am I wrote an e-mail to stranahan@gmail.com giving Lee a chance to comment on what I’ve learned. By 11:15 am he had not responded, although he did continue to lie about my own family situation.

Caveat Emptor.