Ronald Wall

I attended business college in Oklahoma City in 60-61 and returned to Sharon Center in the summer of 1961. Enlisted in the Air Force in Cleveland in the fall of that year and was sent to Lackland AFB for basic training, then San Angelo AFB in Texas for Intelligence school. I met my wife to be in Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1962 while on leave before being sent to Wakkanai Air Station in remote northern Japan for my first overseas tour. The first time I was issued a loaded weapon was during the Cuban Missile crisis (our base was only 30 miles across the La Perusa Straights from the Soviet Union). Returned to the States on the day President Kennedy was assassinated; I learned the news while at a restaurant in Sacramento, Calif. I married Carolyn Sue Whitsett that December in Fort Smith, Arkansas. We were station at Kelly AFB in San Antonio until I was shipped to the Philippines and Thailand during the Vietnam War. Returned to Brooks AFB, San Antonio in 1967 (the second time I was issued a loaded weapon, a .45 cal side arm, when I acted as a courier for classified material from Bangkok to the U.S.) assigned to San Vito Air Station in Italy 1970-1973; spent the next three years at the National Security Agency, Fort Meade, MD. In 1976 I was assigned to the Greek island of Crete. I was assigned back to the NSA in 1978 and retired from the Air Force there in 1981.

I went to work for the State of Arizona in 1981 as a computer programmer and then for Prudential in Phoenix, and finally IBM. Retired from IBM in New Jersey in 1999; returned to Arkansas for five years then returned to Arizona in 2003 where we purchased a house and some land. I maintained web sites, raised chickens and had two horses, not to mention dogs and a cat. My son lived near Nashville for a time and created websites for Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshal Tucker Band and several other southern Rock stars. He was (and still is) occasionally invited on stage to play guitar with the regular band members when they tour and play near where he lives. He once performed with them on the Grand Ole Opry stage in Nashville. He now lives near Phoenix, AZ (as of 2023). My daughter has worked over the years for several social services organizations and is married to a playwright, actor and author and lives in north eastern Ohio. I have three grandsons, five granddaughters and four great-grandchildren.

After my wife died in 2018 I returned to Ohio to be near my daughter and family. In 2020 I moved to the Cincinnati area near my youngest brother; at the time my daughter and son-in-law were planning on moving to Virginia, but those plans did not work out due to the pandemic. I now live in Alexandria, KY and am a member of the Cincinnati War Birds dedicated to preserving the memory of historic military aviation and teaching the young generation about the greatest generation, that of my parents.

I grew up in Sharon Center. In the summer of 1959 I was sent to live with my mother and grandparents in Van Buren, Arkansas (brother Art and I were raised by our grandfather and grandmother Wall and our aunt Clara (Wall) Bridgman in Sharon). I was extremely disappointed that I did not get to graduate with my class of 1960 at Highland. I did graduate from Van Buren High School, Van Buren, Arkansas. I attended a business college in Oklahoma City in 1960-61.