Remembering Ron Ferguson

Whether it be as a soldier serving in the Vietnam War, as a teacher, as a Carthage police officer or a school bus driver, Ron Ferguson's life was a life of service.

Ron was well known in Carthage even before he embarked on a new endeavor in the 1990s that introduced him to even more people, not only in Carthage, but throughout the area.

For a few years during that decade, Ron, who died Sunday at age 72, wrote a weekly column for the Carthage Press, Fergy's Follies, in which he invariably left his readers smiling.

Except for one time.

I had just become managing editor of the Press in December 1993 after serving nearly four years as a general assignment reporter, when we learned that an 8-year-old boy, Douglas Ryan Ringler, a second grader at Hawthorne Elementary in Carthage had disappeared.

During those first few days when it was feared that a stranger had abducted the boy, parents clung tightly to their children and did not let them out of their sight.

When Doug Ringler's burned body was a found in a field near Fort Scott, that fear was combined with anger. A family friend was arrested for the murder.

It was during that time that Ron Ferguson came to me and said he had written a different kind of column. He did not feel like writing anything funny, and he did not think it was what the community needed.

He showed me what he had written. It was exactly what the community needed to read and Ron was the perfect person to deliver the message as a parent, a former policeman and as a Carthage resident.

We broke from our usual practice of running Ron's column on page four, the opinion page, and moved it to page one, omitting the name Fergy's Follies.

I feel guilty because this column was designed to make readers laugh and be happy. But how can I write words of laughter when the life of an 8-year-old child has been snuffed out so brutally in Carthage?

Truth is, I can't. Nor do I want to. Most of us didn't know Douglas Ringler, none of us will likely forget the image of his photograph on the fliers that were spread about town last week. Smiling, blond, appearing full of life that he now won't get to live.

By way of this column, you readers know that I have an 8-year-old son, too. He's ornery, full of life and had he and Douglas ever met, they probably would have had a few things in common.

Like many parents, I have probably hugged and kissed my child more the past week than he cares to remember. But I don't think he's minding it too bad. He knows that something bad happened to a fellow second grader, even though from a different school and he is as concerned and scared as the grownups are.

So here we are. All of us share a certain amount of guilt in the death of Douglas Ringler.

Why did it happen in Carthage?

How could any of us have prevented it from happening.

With those words, Ron Ferguson encompassed the sense of despair and frustration that had settled over Carthage after Doug Ringler's murder.

It was not long before Fergy's Follies returned, and Carthage Press readers no longer felt guilty about laughing when tragedy was hanging over the community.

Just as he helped the city by expressing what we were all thinking about the death, he guided us back into the sunshine with prose that made us smile and every once in a while laugh out loud.

Whether it was with the written word or just with his presence, Ron Ferguson had the gift of bringing smiles.

Thankfully, he was always willing to share that gift.