No one handed Ron Walker an easy trip through life, a life cut short by his untimely death in 1997. Ron was born in 1938 in Cincinnati. When he was a young boy, he started playing basketball at Friars Club. Through the steady guidance of coaches and the skills he learned competing, winning and losing, and working as part of a team, Ron grew into a man of substance in his community.

He graduated from the University of Cincinnati, joined the United States Army, and began a steady career rising to become the Vice Chairman of Great American Insurance Company. While rising in the corporate ranks, he served on many corporate boards and developed several small businesses, including Coney Island, Americana, and others. Outside of the corporate boardroom, Ron used skills developed at Friars Club to lead the Bethesda Hospital Board of Trustees. He served variously as an officer and trustee for TriHealth, National Phi Delta Theta Educational Board, the University of Cincinnati Foundation, and the University of Cincinnati College of Business Administration Advisory Board.

It is not the resume; it is the way he handled himself that makes Friars Club most proud. That is why the Youth Sports Program was rededicated as the Ron Walker Youth Sports Program in his honor in the fall of 1999. Today and tomorrow’s youth will come to know this man who received so much from Friars Club, and who returned even more than he got, and they will be inspired to live up to the standards he set.