Remembering Ron Delong

Rolland E. Delong

Ron Delong, who passed away last week, was one of the school owners I met when I became a defensive driving class monitor back in 1992.  As a program monitor, many of the school people considered me the enemy; government “administrators” have a well-deserved reputation for being idiots and not having a clue what makes business “work.”  I’m sure Ron felt that way too. 

He was prone to jumping to conclusions before he understood something – the Court would pass a new rule about something, and while many of the school owners would just sit back and grumble privately, Ron Delong would be on the phone that day.  “What are you doing, what does this mean, are you going to do this, that or the other… Are you crazy?"  Then, usually, once he understood what the results would be, he’d calm down and if not make peace with it, he’d figure out what to do, how to make it work. But those first few moments when "the volcano" went off were always very exciting!

The other day when I heard his son say that Ron lived life at 100 mph (both literally and figuratively), I thought of those first encounters with him and his “temper.”  Ron’s son was talking about the way he lived – his joy for living and his lifestyle – but all of those other things went right along with that. It was still the same way as the years went by – but as those passed, I became friends with Ron probably more than with any other school staff. 

He treated me like a brother.  I stayed in his home when I went to Kingman to monitor, or to visit the school office. We ate meals together (the first time I ever had the pleasure of eating at The Gourmet Room at the Riverside was with Ron).  He taught me a lot of what I know about shooting and marksmanship.  We went to Laughlin together and hung out at the Riverside together (he liked a card game).  Ron was friends with Don Laughlin – and told stories of teaching private defensive driving classes for him in the penthouse offices on the top of the hotel.

Ron was a long time law enforcement officer, from a family of law enforcement officers – many generations worth.  Many of his stories were about those times of course – and his job as a drug crimes investigator for the Arizona Department of Public Safety.  Ron had put many criminals behind bars in his career and he often worried that some of them held grudges about that – he was very careful of his safety as he went about his "retired" life, and he was never far from a weapon with which to protect himself if the need arose - and I had to get used to finding weapons in the strangest places around his home.  He thought some of those bad guys might “look him up” sometime.  This is one of the outcomes of a career in law enforcement I think a lot of folks don’t think about.


Ron apparently went about his Highway Patrol duties with a fair amount of zest.  I recently read a book about the Highway Patrol written by Paul Palmer, a retired Patrolman and originally a dispatcher.  One of Palmer's recollections of Ron was that when he checked in for duty, you knew you were going to have an "interesting shift."


I believe it was Ron’s grandfather (and grandmother) who had once arrested John Dillinger – and took him home for supper.  Ron had a photo of Dillinger, taken on the “porch” with his grandfather – and his grandmother peering through the screen door from behind them.  I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen the photo.  The story about John Dillinger was one of his favorites.

One of my own favorites had to do with something that Ron got into trouble with – in a defensive driving class.  I was monitoring his class, and he and I had been yucking it up and having some fun all day.  But I was sitting in the back, watching and listening, and Ron was moving around the classroom and talking to the students.  And without saying much, he handed a small package (about the size of a package of seeds) to a male student – a rather noisy and troublesome male student.  The package contained “Rattlesnake Eggs.”  If you’ve never seen them, they are a practical joke item that consists of a small bowed wire "frame" with a rubber band across the open end (like a sling-shot), and on the rubber band suspended between the arms of the frame, a metal washer.  You wind the washer up on the rubber band, and slip the assembled device into the paper package, so the washer is held tight and immobile within the confines of the envelope.  On the outside, the packaging advises the holder to be careful, the package contains rattlesnake eggs, and not to let the package get too warm (the implication is that the eggs might hatch).  When the unsuspecting person opens the envelope, the washer is released and spins inside the paper package, buzzing loudly as it unwinds and scaring bejeesus out of the victim.

In this case, either the student (the intended victim) had seen it before and didn’t want to be victimized again, or perhaps he was just indifferent or not-curious enough to look inside, so he handed the package unopened to a little old lady sitting beside him.  And she opened the rattlesnake eggs.  She almost wet herself, and pandemonium ensued.  Later, in my best sanctimonious official puffed-up bureaucratic voice, I advised Ron (probably through tears of laughter) that it was not a good idea to bring rattlesnake eggs to a defensive driving classroom.  We were both lucky she didn’t die of a heart attack right there.  Unintended consequences can be devastating.

During my years at the Court I was not permitted to teach defensive driving classes.  When I retired, having seen hundreds of different approaches to teaching the topic, it was Ron’s approach to it more than any other that I emulated in getting back into the classroom with defensive driving students.  Most defensive driving instructors teach a review of “traffic laws” – and really do very little with the nuts and bolts of defensive driving itself.  Ron taught practical defensive driving.  His class was built around a framework of the different types of wrecks he’d seen in his career – and exactly how a person could avoid getting involved in them.  It was real world and I believe his class was one of the best I’ve seen in that regard.  His students could go out the door with a better ability to stay safe on the roads if they listened and learned from him.  I learned from his example, and I still teach my classes using that same approach.

Ron Delong is one of my best memories of my years working with the Defensive Driving Program.  He was honest and as straightforward as you can get.  He was a good friend, the type of person that does anything for you if he can help, whether you’re talking about the community at large or on a personal level.  Ron Delong made a difference in his world. He truly did live life at 100 mph – or faster.   I loved him, I will miss him; he is gone too soon.  I was fortunate to know him. He was my friend.