Ralph Albert Coonrod was the youngest of three sons who grew up during the Great Depression and volunteered to join the United States Army Air Corps during WW2. He served as a navigator in a B-17 and as an officer in the US Air Force Reserves until the 1960s. After the war he attended college on the GI Bill, became a mechanical engineer and worked for NASA at the Plumbrook Research Reactor facility until retiring in 1974. During those years he married and fathered two sons. He then worked for the Florida Department of Education until he passed away on December 8,1987. His "Lucky Bastard Club" certificate, medals and wartime photographs are framed and hang on a wall in the home where his three granddaughters grew up.