Richard Alan Stubblefield

Richard Alan Stubblefield died in Colorado Springs on August 30, 2026. He was seventy-five. Born there on August 28, 1951, he grew up looking at the Peak the way other boys looked at a clock. His father read meters. Richard learned that electricity is not a metaphor. It is a set of rules that do not care how late you are for supper. He spent thirty-one years as a lineman, first as a groundman, later as the man who would climb when a wet wind had already made the job a rumor. He did not romanticize the work. He said a night outage was a country with its own weather. He taught younger crews that a rubber glove is not a suggestion, and that you do not leave a jumper for the next shift to find in the dark. He charged a fair hour and a smaller one when a widow's service drop needed more mercy than a tariff. He married Denise Stubblefield in 1975. They raised two daughters in a ranch house that needed a new swamp cooler every few summers. Denise kept the books for a cousin's garage. Richard grilled in the driveway and considered a Broncos loss a private grief. After he retired he still came out when a neighbor's well pump died, moving slower, carrying the same seriousness. Friends remember a man who checked the sky before he checked his watch, who could sit through a long offering at church without looking at a phone, and who hummed while he worked as if the line were a conversation. He loved the late light on the foothills, a plate of green chile he did not finish, and the particular quiet after the lights came back. He died in Colorado Springs, under the mountain that had always been in the window. The circuits still close. Someone else will climb the next one.