When Stephen H. Russell reflects on his life, he is struck by the way seemingly small decisions and ordinary situations have blossomed into extraordinary opportunities. “None of this was part of a strategic plan,” he says, “and I feel grateful when I see all the times Heavenly Father has blessed me.”
Those small decisions started during Russell’s freshman year at BYU. He came to Provo to study accounting but found his first class “extremely boring and mechanical.” What did capture his interest was his first economics class. “It gave me a new vision as to what I wanted to do and be and study,” he says. Also important was his decision to enroll in BYU’s Air Force ROTC, which kept him out of the draft and allowed him to enter the military as an officer.
In 1967, after earning his BS in economics with a double minor in accounting and business management, Russell began his required four-year stint in the US Air Force. He chose financial management as his career field and was assigned to be a cost analyst for the F-111 fighter bomber development project—the most expensive and high-visibility weapons acquisition project of its time. “It wasn’t at all like the mundane jobs young officers usually receive,” Russell remembers. “I don’t know why I got it other than it was a blessing from Heavenly Father.”
Working on the F-111, Russell interacted with some of the finest minds in the aerospace industry and the defense department. “I had wonderful, challenging opportunities, and I grew incredibly,” he says. “After three years, I realized I had new skills, I was enjoying myself, and I could make a contribution. That was when I decided to make the Air Force my career.”
That first assignment opened more doors for Russell. With military sponsorship, he earned an MS in logistics management from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1974 and a PhD in business economics from Arizona State University in 1977. Afterward, he spent four years at the United States Air Force Academy as an associate professor of economics.
Another “small” decision came when Russell was serving as comptroller at Williams Air Force Base in Mesa, Arizona. The base’s pilot-training program needed new-generation aircraft, and Russell took it upon himself to do a cost analysis to determine whether it was more advantageous to buy or to lease planes. His superiors, impressed with his work, sent him to the Pentagon to share his findings with the Air Force chief of staff and representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. At the end of Russell’s presentation, they offered him a job.
“It was a high privilege to serve as assistant for economics in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration,” he says. In this position, he did analysis on defense procurement financing and profit policy and on issues related to the defense industrial base.
Russell retired from the Air Force in 1991. The ensuing decision to take his wife, Nancy Dipoma Russell, back to live in her hometown of Ogden, Utah, led him to a twenty-two-year career at Weber State University’s Goddard School of Business and Economics. He taught courses in logistics, purchasing, and business statistics and was instrumental in growing and developing the supply chain management program—now considered the school’s flagship program. He became a full professor in 2002 and received WSU’s Lowe Innovative Teaching Award and the Goddard School’s Alston Endowed Award for Teaching Excellence.
Russell’s seventy-seven years have been marked by other ordinary decisions that have led to cherished experiences, such as the opportunity in 2003–04 to be a visiting professor of economics at BYU–Hawaii, which he considers another supernal blessing from his Heavenly Father.
Although he entered a new and difficult phase of life when Nancy passed away in 2014, Russell remains optimistic. He finds happiness in close relationships with his eight children, thirty-six grandchildren, and fourteen great-grandchildren—and in the continued small decisions that bring extraordinary opportunities.
