Leon E. Ring, a resident of Mount Juliet, TN, died from leukemia on September 13, 2021. He was 88 years old. Leon was born on February 8th, 1933, in Thielman MN, the son of John Francis Ring and Phoebe Elizabeth McMillin. Leon graduated from Mary E. McCahill Institute High School in 1950, and went on to attend St. Thomas College in St. Paul, MN, and then the University of Notre Dame. Leon received a BA Summa Cum Laude from St. Thomas and a BS Cum Laude and MS in Aeronautical Engineering from Notre Dame in 1955. He then attended Cornell University where he earned his PhD in Aeronautical Engineering in 1960. While in graduate school, Leon worked for Convair in San Diego, where he met his future wife, Kathleen Sharp in the summer of 1957. Leon and Kathy were married on June 14, 1958 at St. John’s Catholic Church in San Diego.
After graduate school, Leon served three years in the Air Force at the Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) in Tullahoma, TN. He then joined Sverdrup Technology at AEDC where he rose to the Vice President level in 1976. He continued to rise in engineering management: General Manager of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in Knoxville, Vice President and General Manager Bechtel Operating Services in San Francisco, President of FluiDyne Engineering Corp. in Minneapolis, Deputy Director National Wind Tunnel Project in Cleveland, and finally President and CEO of AeroSystems Engineering Corp., from which he retired in 1999.
After retiring, Leon and Kathy moved back to Tennessee to build and live in their dream house on Old Hickory Lake in Mount Juliet. They loved to spend time boating and teaching their grandchildren to water ski, and then relaxing on their deck and enjoying the beautiful view. Leon was also very serious about genealogy. He was proud to have traced family ancestors back for hundreds of years, and had over 10,000 names in his database.
Leon was preceded in death by his wife Kathy in 2015, one son, Gregory, in 1961, as well as his parents and 10 brothers and sisters: Fr. Francis, Rosamond, Vincent, Kenneth, Earl, Ronald, Delmar, Norbert, Phoebe Ann, and Gerard. He is survived by two sons, William Ring and his wife Maida of Solana Beach, CA, and Craig Ring and his wife Jane of La Canada, CA, and by two sisters, Sr. Pat and Margaret, as well as six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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