Ron Stuckey, Auther, Researcher, and Teacher
Ron Stuckey is a frequent guest in our home. When he is in Tiffin for an alumni affair at Heidelberg College, he often stays at our home. Even when we get up at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning, Ron is awake before us. We will find him at the end of the breakfast table, hard at work on his next book. He often shares his latest pictures with us, and even sends us pictures of flowers in our garden that he thought worthy of a picture.
Ron came to Heidelberg as a freshman in 1956, the same year that Percy came as a new faculty member. He was raised on a farm on the Baseline Road in Lykens Township. He was valedictorian of his high school class. He recalled to us that his mother had saved all of his school papers from the first grade through high school. He continued this custom while he was in college, saving all his notes, and examinations.
He earned money during his senior year in high school and during all four years at Heidelberg by teaching electric steel guitar and accordion for Kitchen’s House of Music in Tiffin.
During his senior year at Heidelberg, he assisted in the Botany and biology labs and wrote out a key to the spring wild flowers which was used for many years after he graduated.
He then went to the University of Michigan where he earned an M.A. (1962) and Ph. D. (1965) He was appointed Instructor in Botany at the University of Michigan where he taught a course in Field Plant Taxonomy. >From there he went to Ohio State University where he was Professor of Botany for 26 years. For many years in the summer, he was associate director of the University’s field biological station, the F. T. Stone Laboratory, located on Gibraltar and South Bass Islands in Lake Erie. He also was the director of the University herbarium for nine years.
Throughout his career, he has written over 200 articles in scientific and popular journals in addition to several books and chapters in books. He is an authority on the identification and geographical distribution of aquatic and wetland plants in North America. He has also researched the lives of early botanists in eastern North America: Frontier Botanist: William Starling Sullivant’s Flowering-Plant Botany of Ohio (1830-1850), Women Botanists of Ohio Born Before 1900, Edwin Lincoln Mosely (1865-1948): Naturalist, Scientist, Educator, Emanuel D. Rudolph’s Studies in the History of North American Botany; E. Lucy Braun and Ohio Prairies, Linking Ohio Geology and Botany, Papers by Jane Forsyth, Compiled by Ronald L. Stuckey, and Lost Stories: Yesterday and Today at Put-in-Bay.
For this last book, Ron was selected by the Book Study Group I of the A.A.U.W. Columbus Chapter to receive the Florence Roberts Head book award at this year’s Ohioana Library Book Award luncheon. Percy and Mary were his invited guests along with many friends and associates.
The luncheon was held at the Jeffry Mining Center, home of the Ohioana Library Association, 274 East First Avenue, in Columbus. This building is a huge space with ceilings that show ceiling girders 40 feet above the floor. It was once a manufacturing building and was given to the Ohioana Library Association to house their growing collection. Their mission is ‘’to recognize and encourage the creative accomplishments of Ohioans; preserve and expand a permanent archive of books, sheet music, manuscripts, and other materials by Ohioans and about Ohio and Ohioans; and disseminate information about the work of Ohio writers, musicians, and other artists to researchers, schools, and the general public.’’
The Ohioana Quarterly reviews current books by Ohio authors, both fiction and non-fiction as well as poetry books and books for young readers. An example is High Drama in Fabulous Toledo by Lily James Among the award winning authors for this year are Julie Salamon for her book, Facing the Wind, about a man who kills his family and is found innocent by reason of insanity, and Shelley Pearsall for her book of juvenile fiction, Trouble Don ’t Last, about the Underground Railroad. John Jakes was presented the Ohioana Pegasus Award for Unique and Outstanding Achievements. He has written more than 50 novels. His most recent one being Charleston, published last year. It follows the Bell family in Charleston, SC from 1720 through 1866.
We are happy to see Ron honored at this luncheon. It would be difficult to list all the awards for teaching and research that Ron has received. This is even more remarkable when we think about the period from October 1984 through summer 1986 when Ron suffered through clinical depression and congestive heart failure. He spent 10 months in three different hospitals and was able to make a complete recovery. Most of his books have been written since that time.
He has been generous to Heidelberg College, giving an endowment to fund the bringing of an outstanding botany speaker to the college and support for a tree to be planted each year in memory of an outstanding alumnus. He has donated all his papers and books to the Hayes Memorial Library in Fremont including the grade school papers his mother saved. We are proud to salute his life and many accomplishments.
– Percy and Mary