Ronald Robert O’Neal, Jr (born 1936) died peacefully at home in Sun Valley, CA on July 17, 2024 after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 87 years old.

He was born in Burbank, CA and attended St. Charles Borromeo School in North Hollywood where he met the love of his life, Barbara Hodson, in 4th grade. They ran off and got married in Las Vegas while he was still attending high school at Notre Dame in Sherman Oaks, CA. They remained married for 70 beautiful years until Barbara passed away on April 10, 2024, three months before he did, at the age of 89.

He took news of his cancer diagnosis with more grace than his family could process, only finding out 1 week before he passed. He said he lived a great long life and just wanted to be with his bride again.

Ronald is survived by 3 children, 6 grandchildren, 5 great-grandchildren, 7 nieces and nephews (sorry if I missed anyone), and extended family that love him abundantly and miss him terribly. They have stories for days about his witty sense of humor. It was truly one of his best traits, down to the very end.

Ronald loved a great book, a dad joke that would make you groan, an old Western, a classic radio program, a Cupid’s Hot Dog, a trip to Hawaii, a car sing along with the Beach Boys “Kokomo”, hiking and backpacking in his younger years, getting lost in YouTube videos (especially Disney Park vloggers- Provost Park Pass and anything to do with cooking/food), working on his genealogy website, watching his grandson pitching for Chaminade Varsity Baseball online, lamenting his love/hate relationship with the Dodgers, and checking out every mall and church wherever he traveled. He was a highly intelligent man, teaching himself a myriad of subjects and hobbies and could build anything from scratch even if he had never done it before. He always had a way of providing perspective on anything you might be going through such as “things are never so bad they can’t get worse” (and man, was he always right about that). He spent 36 years working on military defense airplanes and in true top secret dad fashion wouldn’t even tell his kids what he worked on during his time there, even at the very end of his life. He was truly one of a kind and will forever be missed. 

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