Stanley R. Tiner - Early Years, Education, Military

Early Years, Education, Military

Tiner was born to E. R. "Ray" Tiner (1908–2010), an oil refinery worker, and the former Nannie Lea "Nancy" Randolph in Springhill in northern Webster Parish just south of the Arkansas state line.

Ray Tiner was a native of rural Tyro in Lincoln County in southeastern Arkansas, a son of John Bunyan and Lula Mat Tiner. John Bunyan Tiner, Stanley Tiner's grandfather, operated a gristmill and blacksmith shop with other family members. Ray Tiner attended the University of Arkansas at Monticello, then Arkansas A&M College, where he played football and captained the Boll Weevil basketball team. On the university's centennial in 2009, Ray Tiner served as grand marshal of the homecoming parade.

Stanley Tiner was reared in Cotton Valley and after 1950 in Shreveport in Caddo Parish, the largest city in north Louisiana. In 1960, he graduated from Fair Park High School there. He has a sister, Betty T. Fulgium, and her husband, Don Fulgium, of Shreveport.

In 1969, Stanley Tiner received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. He was the editor during his senior year of The Tech Talk, the student newspaper, and studied under journalism chairperson Wiley W. Hilburn, who instructed him to bring current political issues into the student newspaper. A long-time editorial writer for the Shreveport Times, Hilburn was subsequently inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield because of his expertise in Louisiana politics. Tiner was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tiner is a former chapter president of the Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi.

Tiner served in the United States Marines and fought for thirteen months in the Vietnam War.