Rep Corner
Ron Smith has a Bronze Star for valor, and a bunch of gold ones for 43 years in medical sales
Ron Smith
He’s not quite Forrest Gump, but Ron Smith, territory sales consultant for the Laboratory Products division of Cardinal Health, has led a pretty interesting life. Born in Manitoba, Canada, he was raised in Odessa, Texas. He graduated in 1966 from Permian High School, the school on which the book and movie “Friday Night Lights” was based.
After high school, he served as a corpsman for the U.S. Marine Corps, and spent most of a year serving on the Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam in 1967-1968. He received a Bronze Star for Valor for his service, though he had to wait 26 years for it. Today, he relishes his work with Cardinal Health, his family life, and the occasional bow hunting.
Head start
Smith had a head start on interesting.
He was born in St. Boniface, Manitoba, just outside of Winnipeg. His dad, also named Ron, was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and later joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. Ron Sr. was honorably discharged from the RCAF due to conditions he had acquired as a kid with rheumatic fever, and later became a radio personality in Winnipeg, hosting a show in which he interviewed a variety of people – some of them famous (e.g., Donna Reed, Audie Murphy).
It was at the radio station where his father met his wife-to-be, Fran, from Regina, Saskatchewan. Fran played the voice of different characters on the station (among them, Wendy in “Peter Pan”) and did writing for the station as well.
In 1952, when young Ron was five, the family moved to Odessa, where Ron Sr. was pursuing a job at that city’s new TV station, KOSA. The job didn’t pan out, so Ron Sr. started selling swimming pools, and then real estate. (Nevertheless, on Saturday nights in Odessa, he hosted “Uncle Ron’s Cabin,” a show of classical music and listener call-ins on KRIG Radio.)
It was in Odessa that young Ron got his first taste for the lab. In 1954, when he was in first grade, he was diagnosed with rheumatic fever, and he spent a good part of that year in the hospital. He’d jump in a wheelchair and go to the laboratory. “Everybody got to know me,” he says. It wasn’t the science that drew him there so much as the frogs. They were used for pregnancy testing back then. (The lab would inject the frog with the woman’s urine, wait for a couple of days, then dissect the frog to see the effects – if any – of the hormone hCG, which is produced during pregnancy.)
Doc Wrong Way
His interest in medicine – first stoked in the lab in Odessa – stayed with him. So, after graduation, he joined the Navy to receive training as a corpsman. After a year of training, he got the call to join the Marines – which had been his goal when he enlisted in the Navy.
Each platoon had two corpsmen, on whom the men in the platoon relied heavily. “Here I was, 19 years old, with all that responsibility,” he recalls. “The Marines in my platoon would come to me with everything and anything. I was their mom, dad, psychiatrist, you name it.” Despite the burdens, to this day he still misses the camaraderie he enjoyed back then. “The bond between corpsman and Marine is like no other in any branch of service.”
His comrades in the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines were intrigued that, while some young Americans were fleeing to Canada to escape serving in Vietnam, Canadian-born Smith had actually enlisted. For that reason, they called him “Doc Wrong Way.”
Serving on Con Thien (the “Hill of Angels” in the Vietnamese language) and other positions around the Demilitarized Zone (between North Vietnam and South Vietnam) from July 1967 to August 1968 proved harrowing. “Overlooking the DMZ, as we were, the North Vietnamese pounded us with artillery every day,” he says. The troops there referred to it as “spending time in the barrel” and “the meat grinder.”
In fact, when the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong (supporters of the NVA in South Vietnam) launched what became known as the Tet Offensive on Jan. 31, 1968, “to us, there was relatively little difference between Tet and any other time,” he says. “We got hit numerous times while on patrols, operations and sweeps along the DMZ. We lost a lot of Marines and corpsmen as well.”
One month after Smith arrived in Vietnam in July 1967, two Marine engineers tripped a mine in a minefield not far from Smith’s position at Con Thien. Smith and another corpsman, Bob Wilson, went after them, only to find one of the Marines had died, and the second near death. “We patched him up and carried him out, and he was medevac’ed out.” The Marine died two days later, but Smith didn’t find out his fate – or his name – until 1993.
Bronze Star
“I got a call from someone who was writing an article about Con Thien,” he recalls. It turns out the battalion chaplain (known by the troops as “Chappy”) read the story, got in touch with Smith and let him know that years before, he had recommended Smith and Wilson for the Bronze Star for their valor for venturing into that minefield. Nothing came of it then.
But the producers of a newsmagazine show called “The Crusaders” learned about what happened in 1967, researched it, and identified the two Marines whom Smith and Wilson had tried to rescue. It was the producers of that show who brought all the families together in Washington for the awarding of the Bronze Star by Secretary of the Navy John Dalton. “Talk about emotional,” says Smith.
In Washington, Smith not only learned the name of the young Marine whom he had helped medevac – Andy Latessa, from Fall River, Massachusetts – he also met Andy’s father (also named Andy) and mother. Some time later, he spent a week with the Latessas in Massachusetts. Smith and Andy Sr. stayed in touch until Latessa’s death in 2000. “His family called me and told me their dad had wanted me to serve as a pallbearer, so I flew to Fall River,” recalls Smith. And, as their dad had asked, the family gave Andy Jr.’s Marine Corps ring – which the elder Latessa had worn since his son’s death – to Smith. He wears it today.
Returning to the States, Smith married Debbie Garms and, with assistance from the GI Bill, he got an associates degree in medical technology from Odessa Junior College and a bachelor’s degree from UT Permian Basin in May 1976. To help finance his education and a growing family (the couple had a baby, Todd), he worked full-time in a hospital lab while attending school. There, he got to know the sales reps calling on the lab.
Itching to sell
“When the reps came to the lab, I could see their personalities were very much like mine,” he says. “They liked to have fun, but they also liked to close deals.”
As he drew close to graduating, Smith passed his resume on to his Scientific Products sales rep, and in June 1976, started his career there. (At the time, Scientific Products was owned by American Hospital Supply. In 1985, American was acquired by Baxter Travenol Laboratories. Then, in 1995, Baxter spun off much of what it had acquired into a company known as Allegiance Healthcare Corp. Three years later, Cardinal Health acquired Allegiance.)
For six months, he worked in a warehouse and distribution center in Grand Prairie, Texas, where he learned everything from customer service to picking-and-packing lab supplies. “I was itching to get out into the world of sales,” he recalls.
And he did, moving his family to Abilene, Texas, to work a territory in West Texas. Since then, life has been good, though not without sorrow. Todd died of cancer in 1994, and Debbie died in 2003. Later, Smith married a transcriptionist from one of his accounts – Janet White. The two have been happily married ever since. “I call her my ‘happy thought,’” he says. “When I think of her, I can fly.”
After 43 years selling to the laboratory, Smith is still doing what he loves. “I learn something new every day, and I think that’s what I enjoy most about my job.” He describes his teammates in West Texas as “the most awesome people I know,” and says his customers are like family. In fact, one time, when he was late for an appointment, his customer called his wife to see if he was OK.
Good customers, products and teammates are important, but representing a really great company is essential for success in sales, says Smith, adding that Cardinal Health is such a quality company. “It’s the gold standard.”