Ronald Carroll Christensen, 84, of Dagmar, died Wednesday, July 2, 2025, at the Sheridan Memorial Nursing Home in Plentywood.
\n\t He was born June 16, 1941, to Ray and Millie Christensen (Rasmussen) in Williston, N.D. They brought him home to the farm in Dagmar, where he was later joined by brother, Richard, and sister, Lila.
\n\t He attended a country school for elementary education then went to Grenora, N.D., for high school. There, he was a member of a car club he helped organize called The Aces. He and his friends loved working on cars and singing to popular music of the day, by singers like Jim Reeves and Tex Ritter.
\n\t He was a proud veteran, having been drafted into the Army in the early \u201860s. As part of his service, he deployed to South Carolina for riot control during the Martin Luther King Jr. marches. He also served in special forces, working with heavy equipment and the chemical Agent Orange.
\n\t While home on leave from the Army, he went on a blind date with Patricia Ann Rockstad. After returning to his station, the two wrote letters back and forth. In one letter, he told Pat he bought her a ring. In the next letter, he told her he sold the ring and bought a car. Despite the first ring having been sold, the two married in September 1965. Soon after, they welcomed a son, Robert. Two and a half years later, Roger was born, followed by another son, Rodney, then another, Russell. <\/p>\n
\t They moved their boys to the family farm in rural Dagmar in 1974. He worked for the Sheridan County Road Department and Big M Trucking. Later, he and Pat started a roustabout company called C& L Tank. The oil industry dried up and farming got tougher so, in 1988, He went to central Nevada to work in a mine. Pat soon followed and they spent the next 20 years in Elko, Nev.
\n\t They retired to the farm in 2011, going back to their agricultural roots and raising beef cows with Russell and his wife, Mandy. He enjoyed haying and calving, but he was especially fond of the vast amounts of lawn mowing to be done. Between the lawn mower and his Gator, there was no inch of the farm he didn\u2019t drive over during his later years.
\n\t He was proceeded in death by an infant sister; and two infant great-grandchildren.
\n\t He is survived by wife, Pat of Dagmar; sons, Robert Christensen of Dagmar, Roger Christensen of Froid, Rodney Christensen of Dagmar and Russell Christensen of Dagmar, 15 grandchildren; 28 great-grandchildren; and siblings, Richard Christensen and Lila Baker.
\n\t At his requested, cremation has taken place and a memorial service will be held at a late date. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"news-destination":[14],"news-source":[11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107383,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107279\/revisions\/107383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107279"},{"taxonomy":"news-destination","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-destination?post=107279"},{"taxonomy":"news-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-source?post=107279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}