Growing up, Frank Ragnow was an avid hunter.
He went pheasant hunting with his father, Jon, near his grandmother’s house along the Iowa-South Dakota border. He hunted hogs one time during his playing days with the Arkansas Razorbacks.
“Kind of a carnivore, killing your own kind,” Ragnow joked.
And he still remembers the first time his brother, Jack, joined him and his dad on a deer hunt with one of his father’s friends.
The friend owned a home improvement company, and the quartet used the friend’s show trailer as their hunting lodge for the night. Jack couldn’t sleep, so he popped the M. Night Shyamalan horror movie “Signs” in the trailer’s VCR, and when Ragnow and his brother got up before dawn and made their way through the neighboring cornfield for the morning’s hunt, they walked out “just crying, like scared to death.”
“Deer hunting camp for us was just like spiritual,” Ragnow said. “It was every single year with the same people. So many stories besides the hunting, like the camp, the eating, all the stuff in between. It’s just, I’m incredibly grateful that (my father) introduced that to me at a young age cause I just think there’s so many things in the outdoors and it’s so good for kids and I’m incredibly grateful that he did that for me.”
Entering his sixth season with the Detroit Lions, Ragnow has made it his mission to help kids develop a similar affinity for the outdoors, especially those who’ve lost a parent like Ragnow did his father six years ago.
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On Thursday, Ragnow hosted his first annual skeet shooting showdown at the Bald Mountain Shooting Range, with profits going to his Rags Remembered Foundation, which he started last year in memory of his father.
The foundation will host an outdoor camp June 10 for about 100 children who’ve lost family members, will host a more intimate fishing experience for six grieving families later this summer and provides materials for in-home tailgates for other families in-season.
Ragnow and about 10 of his Lions teammates, including offensive linemen Penei Sewell, Halapoulivaati Vaitai and Graham Glasgow plus Red Wings star Dylan Larkin, joined teams of four in Thursday’s 14-station clay shooting tournament.
“I’ve seen how other people, they lose family members, some people grieve and they grieve privately and I guess I – I don’t know, I just think you don’t realize, everybody’s affected by grief,” Ragnow said. “And it sucks, and like nobody talks about it. It’s like, the first two weeks and then life moves on. It’s like, ‘Sorry for your loss,’ check in on them and then everybody’s life, the world keeps spinning. So it’s just important for me.”
Ragnow said he grieved privately after his father died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 2016, hours after he watched Frank lead Arkansas to a 52-10 win over Alcorn State.
Ragnow played in Arkansas’ game the following week against Alabama, but he admitted Thursday his father’s death is “something that I’m still dealing with because you compartmentalize all those feelings and they’re going to catch up to you.”
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“Something that a lot of people don’t know that was a challenge for me was, so I trained in Minnesota after Arkansas and then to come to Detroit and leave my family, I had like PTSD,” Ragnow said. “And the fact that I was always, while I was here, that first spring, those first OTAs, I was always worried about my family because it was like leaving them again. And I think a lot of that is because I didn’t talk to anybody about it.”
The outdoors have become a sanctuary for Ragnow, and are a place he still feels kinship with his father.
Ragnow and his wife, Lucy, moved close to Lake St. Clair recently, where Ragnow frequently goes boating or fishing. Sometimes he takes his teammates on his outdoor excursions, though often he goes alone. And he said events like the ones his foundation will host this summer are mutually beneficial.
“We had one of those in-home tailgates and a comment that kind of hit me was there was a young boy who lost his older brother to suicide and his mom made the comment to us that he made the comment that it just felt so good to realize that other people are going through it, and people like someone with my platform,” Ragnow said. “And I think that’s the coolest part is just being able to, because a lot of people, they grieve and it’s just like life goes on, and you don’t really grieve and for him to realize that everybody kind of goes through it I think it’s important.”
The Ragnows are expecting their first child this summer, Aug. 11 in the heart of training camp.
Ragnow said he’s been joking with Lions offensive line coach Hank Fraley that he plans to name his son, “Dexter,” because he’ll get to miss joint training camp practices against Dexter Lawrence and the New York Giants.
“I’m scared to death,” Ragnow said. “Like I said, I had an incredible dad and it’s such an important role in someone’s life and I don’t want to screw it up. Like you’re in charge of a kid, it’s just crazy to fathom. But my wife’s incredible. We got an incredible support group so it’s going to be great.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.