He was born on a ranch in Little Rock, Arkansas, the only son of Chauncey Elvira Stephenson and Ona Richards.
In 1953 he joined the military in the U.S. Army Map Service Lunar Occultation Program, serving until 1955 whereupon he returned to the study of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley.
[1] As a doctoral student, he was awarded the Dorothy Klumpke Roberts Prize in Astronomy by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific during 1956,[2] and was a Lick Observatory Fellow for 1957−58.
[4] Moving to Cleveland, Ohio, he became an instructor at the Case Western Reserve University in 1958, joining the staff of the Warner & Swasey Observatory.
[3] In 1977, he collaborated with Romanian-born astronomer Nicholas Sanduleak to publish a catalogue of Hydrogen alpha emission-line stars.