ronnraymore

I'm a native of Kansas City where I presently reside. I graduated from the University of Missouri with a PhD in Chemistry. 1980, I enlisted in the US Coast Guard, tested into Officer Candidate School, graduated, and was commissioned. I served in Washington, DC as a Chemical Oceanographer in the Office of Research and Development where I was involved in many environmental programs and projects as a Project Officer. At the end of my active duty entered the active reserve program where I served as Port Safety Division Officer, Mobilization Officer, Training Officer, and Executive Officer for the Kansas City, MO and Leavenworth, KS reserve units. I re-entered graduate school at the University of Missouri where I completed the Master of Science, and Doctorate in Chemistry in December of 1979. I was employed by Bayer Agricultural until the 1985 recession . I returned to Coast Guard active duty, headquarters DC, where I worked as a projects officer and in-house quality assurance officer on several critical projects in environmental protection and operational expert systems command and control software development. I retired in 1990 at the rank of Commander (O-5) and receive a retirement annuity. In 1987 I was hired by Bendix-Allied Signal to work in Quality Control at the DOE plant in Kansas City on projects requiring a "Q" security clearance, the highest level of civilian classification. When the Russian threat ended by the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union in 1993 I was released during the reduction in force from a work force of about 8000 to a maintenance work force of about 1200. Being a chemist in an engineering position I was considered unnecessary to this engineering company. I found a position with ManTech Environmental as a contract employee to the Region 7 Environmental Protection Agency where I developed methods for pesticides and conducted analyses for residues in legal prosecutions. In 1998 the ManTech contract was modified to remove all senior chemists due to a change in mission from R&D to routine screening of samples which did not require MS or PhD personnel. I took a position with the US Food and Drug Administration at the Regional Laboratory in Atlanta, GA , offered by an acquaintance in the lab. My mother's declining health made me leave this job two years later to take a job with the US General Services Administration/Federal Supply Service as the Paints and Coatings, and Federal Color Standard Technical Manager.