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Ron was born in Marshall, Texas on September 24th, 1957. By the time he was eleven years old, his family had moved to several different cities, including Tyler, College Station, Dallas, Overland Park, Kansas, Richardson, Austin, San Antonio and finally Houston. His father was a debit agent in the insurance business and did an amazing job of supporting a family by himself, but his quest to make more money dragged their family around the state of Texas for a number of years.
His parents finally settled near Houston in 1969, where he eventually graduated Alief Hastings High School in Alief, Texas in 1976. He attended the University of Houston for two full semesters in 1977 and 1978 but, because he was taking fifteen hours a semester, working forty hours a week and his only means of transportation around town was a ten-speed bicycle, he decided to forgo an education in Mechanical Engineering and go to work. He still remembers asking himself if any education was worth it if a sane person had to ride a bicycle to work in the cold, windy rain without a dime in his pocket. Leaving college might not have been the best decision he ever made, but fate is a funny thing, and he definitely believed at the time a car would serve him a lot better than an armful of books.
Finally, after jumping from one job to the next, in 1979 he got a job as a bartender. He fell in love with the profession and couldn’t get over the fact that he could go into work every day, have a blast and go home with a pocket full of cash. He met his first wife in 1980, and they were married in June of 1981. They have two sons together; Billy was born in 1982 and Justin was born in 1986. He worked for several different high-volume clubs until he went to work for The St. James Restaurant and Cabaret in 1995. Ron is now the general manager.
It was there that Ron met his wife Lori, who is an accountant for the company. They started dating and were married almost a year later on November 1, 2003. She had two children from a previous marriage, Jamie and Greg, but they are now grown and on their own. As of August 2015, Ron and Lori have three grandchildren with two more on the way.
He started writing at a late age. Like most people, Ron believed he could write a book, but it would never have happened if it wasn’t for Lori. At its core, Ruby’s Prayer is the story of what he and his wife went through to finally be together. When he told her he had the idea bouncing around in his head, Lori told Ron he should write it down. From that day forward, they dove into the project full speed. They took several trips up to Huntsville to visit the prison museum, tour the town and try to get their hands on anything that would help them get a feel for what Huntsville and the townspeople were like in 1880. They took a trip to Belton and stayed in the Morning Glory Inn, now a bed and breakfast that was built in 1875. Turner Bell’s home in Ruby’s Prayer is a duplicate of the Morning Glory Inn. They also took time to visit the Bell County Museum and the Temple Railroad Museum.
There were three instances when Ron was forced to quit writing for a while. He didn’t write for six months when he was promoted to general manager of the club, and he stopped again for three more months when Hurricane Ike blew through Houston in September of 2008. He was also set back a little when he and Lori moved into a new home in June of 2009. All in all, it was a great three-year adventure for Ron and he very much looks forward to finishing the next chapter in the lives of the characters who live in Ruby’s Prayer.
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