William “Bill” Charles Stege of Glen Arbor, MI, age 86, died May 14, 2026, of natural causes at his home next to the Sleeping Bear Dunes. Bill was born in Oak Park, Illinois on February 16, 1940, at West Suburban Hospital. He was the eldest of four children born to Shirley Wright Morris and Charles Edward Stege and in the German tradition given his father’s first name as his middle name.

Bill attended Garfield Grade School and Hinsdale Township High School. After somewhat proudly flunking out of Dartmouth College his freshman year in 1958, he was accepted at Ripon College in Wisconsin. He enjoyed Ripon and was proud of his record there, where he graduated with honors as a history major. While at Ripon he was president of his fraternity, editor of the college newspaper and a lineman who earned All-Conference football recognition.

Bill was always industrious. As a young boy his first job was to clean out the furnace and shovel coal three mornings a week for his neighbor. The neighbor was Jay Berwanger, the first Heisman trophy winner. His next job as a preteen was to work driving a team of horses for his relatives on a farm in central Minnesota. Bill and the horses cut, raked and brought hay into the barn. He was paid $25 a summer for the job. Later, through high school and college, he worked on a game farm; at the Oak Brook carnival; and at the Lake Eshquaguma golf course as head greens keeper.

After graduating from Ripon in 1962, he married Carol Jensen and attended the University of Innsbruck Austria. His first job after college was to work at the Harris Trust and Savings Bank in Chicago, where he oversaw a team of computer programmers that converted manual bank systems to the Univac computer. In 1966 he began working at the Villa Park Trust and Savings Bank where he learned to do every job in the 50-employee community bank. He graduated from and taught at the American Institute of Banking and graduated from the Stonier Graduate School of Banking in the upper 10% of his class.

During 1975-76, he and his family traveled around the United States for the bicentennial year. Bill had been creating metal art, including converting a moving van into an RV using his welding skills, and following the bicentennial trip he made a living as a metal artist and ornamental blacksmith.

In 1979 he returned to the Villa Park Trust and Savings Bank, later becoming president and chairman of the board until the bank was sold in 2005. By the time the bank was sold to BMO-Harris, he had set up an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) that owned about a third of the Bank stock. He took pride in the employees receiving substantial payouts upon the sale. Bill served on many nonprofi t and government committees and organizations including as the president of the Villa Park Chamber of Commerce, Glen Arbor Township Planning Commission, Glen Arbor Arts Center Board, and the Grand Traverse Community Foundation. He did so many things to be helpful and positively impact Glen Arbor that his grandkids called him “Mayor Bill”.

In 1981 while at a Muskegon art fair he met Cherrie Bricker. He has said it was the luckiest day of his life! They were married on July 3, 1983, and enjoyed a loving and fun marriage for 43 years. Cherrie’s strength, kindness and steady spirit grounded their family, while Bill was always known for his quick wit and the belief that the best things in life were people you love and experiences you share. Bill and Cherrie lived in Suttons Bay for 25 years while Bill commuted to work in Villa Park, IL. In 2000, they began a 5-year project of building their home next to the Sleeping Bear Dunes and across from Ben and Ananda Bricker’s home on Little Glen Lake. Bill also transformed a worn and tattered caboose into a fully restored living space. He could build or fix almost anything, and with his best friend Ben, built La Fragua (“the Forge”) next to the Glen Arbor Art Centre.

Bill enjoyed pheasant and duck hunting with his brother Tom, taking trips to South Dakota in the fall. Bill could, on occasion, get a perfect score (25 out of 25) at skeet. Bill also had a great sense of humor and knew hundreds of jokes, which he would tell at appropriate times - no matter how often his audience had heard them before. Bill and Cherrie were thankful to have enjoyed travelling to The Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, China, Cambodia, Australia, New Zealand, many European countries and frequently to Mexico to visit family.

Bill is survived by his beloved wife, Cherrie Stege, and his children Melanie ( Jerome) Stege Fix, Karen Stege, Brenda (Brian) Knapp Kigar, Gretchen (John) Knapp Hice, and Christopher (Belinda) Knapp. He leaves behind grandchildren Alexandra Ramírez Stege, Alyssa (Whitaker) Myers Ramírez, Fritz (Samantha) Kigar, Clifford Kigar, Emma (Dakota) Weinman, Zach Robinson, Ava Knapp, Elke Knapp, and Benjamin Knapp, and three cherished great-grandchildren: Samantha Flores Ramírez, Theodora Ramírez Cabrera, and Owen Kigar. He is also survived by his siblings Mary (Paul) Freeman, Thomas (Suzy) Stege, and Ann (Phelps) Anderson. Bill remembered being told as a young boy working on the farm, “Work hard. You can rest when you are dead”.

Rest in Peace.

Family and friends are invited to gather in celebration of Bill’s life at the family home on a date not yet determined, later this summer.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests a donation to be made in honor of Bill’s daughter, Karen Stege, to the Prader-Willi Syndrome Association of Wisconsin at https://pwsaofwi.org/WaysToGive Please share condolences with Bill’s family at www.martinson.info Arrangements are with the Martinson Funeral Home and Cremation Services of Leelanau.