Hard charging and deeply committed.

If he’s not 240 feet under water, you may find Ron at 600 feet above sea level rappelling down a cliff, or at 14,000 feet free-falling to the earth below. It was after skydiving out of a civilian airplane, believe it or not, that Ron first learned he could become a diver for the Navy Reserve.

In reality, Ron’s path to the Navy Reserve began nine years earlier. Ron, then a Navy Aviation Ordnanceman, suffered a serious car accident that left him hospitalized for eight months. Upon his release from the hospital, Ron knew that his dream of going through BUD/S at Coronado to serve his country as a Navy SEAL would never become a reality. Accepting his fate, he proudly finished out the three years left on his service contract and then was transferred to the Inactive Ready Reserve.

After transitioning from the Navy, Ron became employed as a Corrections Officer at a State Penitentiary. “The prison system has a paramilitary set-up to it, and that really appealed to me,” recalls Ron. “Soon after, though, I felt there was a certain void in my life.”

Ron admits to really “missing the military and the action.” According to him, there’s a level of camaraderie, commitment, excitement, and purpose that you just can’t find anywhere else.

As Ron tells it, even hobbies such as skydiving, skiing, mountain biking, hiking, climbing and rappelling couldn’t fill that void. “I was still looking for more.” He found just what he was looking for after jumping out of a plane with a Navy Diver who told him about the Navy Reserve. “I have to say, even with my Navy background, I didn’t really know anything about the opportunities the Navy Reserve offered.”

Ron spent the next six months completing the U.S. Navy Diver, Second Class Dive School at the Navy Diving and Salvage Training Center. Having never made a single SCUBA dive prior to entering the school, Ron graduated in the top five of his class.

Today, Ron is a Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class and a First Class Diver. His first mission as a member of the Navy Reserve was providing dive support for the continued salvage operations on the historic ironclad Civil War ship the USS Monitor, which sank off the coast of North Carolina in 1862.

Since then, his duties have taken him as far away as Sigonella, Sicily, where he earned the title of a Salvage and Construction Underwater Demolition man. Ron was also called to Houston, Texas, where he joined in efforts to recover material from the Space Shuttle Columbia accident in February 2003.

Ron lives in the Northeast United States and has a seven-year-old son, Joshua.