Ronald Owes

Divorced

Caleb, born 2007; Zoe born 2009

Deceased

Roosevelt Grade School

BS in Civil Engineering, University of Washington, 1968
MS in Civil Engineering, University of Washington, 1971
Continued graduate research in Civil Engineering, Urban Economics and Urban Political Science, including teaching classes for Professors who took sabbaticals.

In retrospect, L.C. seems like some kind of psychology experiment gone awry. It was grossly overcrowded, had major economic divergences among the students that were lauded by groups of students with expensive clothes, cars, and activities such as skiing in Sun Valley or golf at private country clubs. It had school sanctioned social clubs that were highly selective in their memberships making sure many of us knew we weren’t good enough to belong, couldn’t eat at the “right lunch tables’ or hang out at soc corner. In spite of major shortcomings, I feel blessed to have gone to L.C. when I did. I learned how to form friendships in a chaotic atmosphere and this carried with me throughout my life. I had teachers who truly cared about me. Examples were Mr. Louderback who brought my parents in for a meeting when he thought I was under-performing and this ended up changing my attitude and the grades I received during the rest of my time at L.C., allowing me to be able to gain admittance to the University of Washington. Another example was Mr. Ellis, a drafting teacher who, on his own, developed a special engineering section for me in his class that started my path down the road to becoming an engineer. All in all, L.C. was a special place where many of the teachers actually cared about us as difficult as that was.

Life’s transitions that have taken place over the last ten years have been significant. I lost several close friends to cancer including one who was a fishing buddy and that has changed my life. My sister and I moved our dad into the Waterford, an assisted living facility on 29th in Spokane where he started in an apartment and ended up in a dementia area where he passed away. The area surrounding our house overlooking Lake Washington in the Madrona neighborhood of Seattle where we lived for about 30 years went through a major change in the wealth of those moving in and subsequent upscale remodeling. We decided we needed to move and bought a house overlooking Puget Sound in north Tacoma, where we had a contractor do a complete remodel that took 1 ½ years. We miss Seattle. Our daughter married and moved to the area in Oakland next to Berkley near where her husband works for Pixar. She has given us two fantastic grandchildren that are now 4 and 6 years old and the light of our lives. I went from managing a major section of a large engineering company to working for a small consultant and then decided I was done commuting by car and plane and fully retired in January of 2013. I was divorced in 2017, moved to Portland, Oregon.

Yes

Throughout US except the deep south, Thailand, throughout Europe on several trips, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Venezuela, Japan, Saipan, New Zealand, Australia, Africa, India, Hawaii numerous times, Alaska numerous times, and now to the San Francisco Bay area to visit grandchildren as often as possible.