"I've Got Your Back."

I had to add something to the obituary I put in below for Ron Shepard. I was still grieving and didn't add anything personal at the time that I wrote it. Ron was the director for the STAR motorcycle skills training program that I am an instructor for, and as you can see by the previous post, he was certainly larger than life. To hear the eulogies and stories that people told about him on Monday truly made me wish I had gotten to know him better. I sent the following message about one of my memories of Ron to the STAR training instructor in response to a message about Ron after the memorial:

It was shortly after I had started on my own path to become a STAR instructor and someone mentioned that some of the veteran instructors had said that they felt like the standards to become an instructor for STAR had been lowered in order to increase the number of instructors to meet the State demand for additional classes. I remember Ron addressing this and how angry, no, livid, he was at the insinuation that the program would lower standards for that reason. He stated emphatically that all of us were chosen and trained under the same level of standards, even though the way the training occurred had changed. This was the first time that I experienced first hand what Lyndon referred to at the memorial as the STAR "I've got your back" philosophy that Ron was the leader of. It was one of the things that I communicated with you all at the time that made me even more proud to receive my STAR instructor certificate of completion than I even was to receive my Master's degree. There have been numerous other times since then that I have experienced this philosophy that is part of Ron's legacy, but that was the first time and let me know that I was in the right place! I will continue to be proud of the program, honored to be a part of the legacy that Ron leaves us all to carry forward