Having a hobby and a passion for community and serving others seemed to come easy to the late Wayne Stephan, North Manchester, Ind. In previous years, if you walked into a small shop right outside town, you would have found Wayne smiling while doing something to restore or paint a vintage tractor.

In September 2019, the Stephans lost a significant part of their family when Wayne died. He never hesitated to help anyone, and had a deep love for all things family, community and old tractors.

He worked 19 years for the city street department, which he loved, but one of his greatest passions was restoring vintage tractors. It didn’t seem to be just a hobby to Wayne, family members note. It was something he took very seriously. After Wayne died unexpectedly, his wife, Diana, and family — including his son Mike, wife Susi, and their children, Guy and Levi — wanted to keep his love alive by maintaining his tractors.

Over the course of his lifetime, Wayne restored over 50 vintage tractors. Diana helped him with a lot of the restoration process.

“The small details were done by Diana, which was pretty cool, because it was a team effort between the two of them,” Susi says.

Restoring for others

“He liked to restore his own, but even more for other people,” Diana says. “To take something that had meaning and sentimental value to someone and bring it back — to see the look on their face when they saw it was priceless.”

Susi adds, “There is a small acreage there at the farm, and Wayne would use his vintage tractors and disks to farm that ground, and now Mike, Guy and Levi are keeping that going.”

Wayne’s love for restoring tractors led him to build a new paint room in his shop. The first project that took place there was painting his grandson’s truck.

“That is a special memory for all of us,” Susi says.

Wayne died in September that same year, after getting to see his new paint room, and help paint his grandson’s first truck.

If you drive past Wayne and Diana’s farm on Memorial Day or Labor Day, you will probably see his collection of tractors sitting in the front yard, with the American flag waving. The road seems to have more traffic on these holidays, as people know that when they drive by, Wayne’s beloved tractors will be on display. One thing that is unique about this collection is that it makes a complete John Deere early number, 40 to 80 Series, and Wayne kept the certificates for all of them.

Carrying on this tradition has been an important step to keeping his memory alive, Diana says.

Mize is a senior in agricultural communication at Purdue University.