From the Archives.
These days are coming again(UGH!).
I had a great little helper on this day
but like painting the fence in Tom Sawyar I
think this year she will be too old to fall for it!
Ron Schults graduated from Saint Joseph High School in Saint Joseph, Michigan where he was born and grew up. Ron attended Michigan Technical University in Houghton, Michigan, graduating with honors in 1978. He was captain of the MTU tennis team, winning the conference championship in his senior year.
He founded The Abonmarche Group in 1979 to provide engineering, architectural, surveying, landscape architecture, and planning services to municipal, private, institutional, commercial, and industrial clients. In addition to complete professional design and project management, the firm also provides community and private planning; land development; feasibility studies; professional engineering consulting and design; hydrographic and land surveying; financing; state and federal grant assistance; and construction management.
Abonmarche’s corporate office is in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Regional offices are located in Manistee, Michigan; South Bend and Fort Wayne, Indiana. An international office is located in Singapore. In addition, they have 13 international representative offices so they can provide professional services worldwide. Abonmarche’s combined staff consists of over 100 professionals. They maintain modern, state-of-the-art architectural, engineering, and planning equipment, such as computer aided design and drafting (CADD) systems, and complete computerized surveying instruments, including GPS.
The Marina / Waterfront Development Division provides technical consulting services on public and private projects both domestically and internationally. Currently, Abonmarche boast projects in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, and North and South America. Their team can perform technical oceanographic and coastal analyses, design recreation/ waterfront master plans, landside marina service facilities, sand transport movement, structural design of breakwater and shoreline protection systems, and consult on marina operations and management. They can also provide development services including cash flow analysis and financing assistance.
Other offices are located in:
- Argentina, Germany, Malta, Australia, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Kuwait, U.A.E., Egypt, Latvia, England and the Maldives.
In 2004 Ron was nominated by Earnest & Young as a finalist in Michigan’s entrepreneur of the year. He won the same award in 2005 at the National level.
In 2005 Ron sold all but the Waterfront portion of Abonmarche after the tragic and untimely death of his wife in an automobile accident. That terrible event was the catalyst to the creation of Lory’s Place, a grief healing center associated with Hospice at Home. One of Ron’s best friends, Lisa Bartoszek, works at Hospice and at the time of Lory’s death she swept into action helping Ron cope with the loss of his wife and helped him break the news to his two children and then helping them move on after this terrible change in their lives. What Lisa did for Ron then, she now does full time for families who attend and are participants at Lory’s Place.
Ron, along with business partner and retired Whirlpool executive Bill Marohn created Lory’s Place after Ron realized how blessed he had been since his wife’s death. The thought of others going through what he did with no help at all was what made Ron and others start Lory’s Place.
Lory’s Place joined the National Hospice Regatta Alliance in 2005 and Ron and his crew of the Wellenreiter sailed in the 2005 championship in Annapolis. The Wellenreiter, a J-105, was donated for use in the regatta and Ron and his Saint Joseph, Michigan crew transported the boat over 800 miles to Annapolis.
The Lory’s Place representative to the Nation Championship was determined by the winner of the Saint Joseph River Yacht Club’s Fall Series, sailed on Lake Michigan, coupled with volunteer activity or monetary contributions to Lory’s Place. The competition was tough right to the end of the series. Ron Schults, along with the crew of the Wellenreiter won that series and will represent Lory’s Place again in 2006.
Ron has cruised extensively around the world including sails from Taiwan where he and a partner had a Tayana 55 “Attitudes” built in 1987. Ron and his partner, Mike Pritinin, sailed from Taiwan to Hong Kong. To the Philippines, to Malaysia, to Singapore and back to Hong Kong where a crew sailed the boat back to San Francisco by way of Hawaii. Ron sold the boat in San Francisco changing the plans to bring it to Lake Michigan. He has also cruised in the British Virgin Islands, the US Virgin Islands, Tahita/Bora-Bora and to Malta in the Medeterian Sea. Locally Ron has sailed the Chicago to Mackinaw race 8 times, competed 15 Tri-State races on Lake Michigan, won the SJRYC Boat of the Year in 2005 and 2006 and competed in the 2006 National Hospice Regatta Alliance.
Ron’s first sailboat on the Great Lakes was a Hunter 31 followed by a Morgan 42 and today a J-105. All his boats have been named “Wellenreiter”, which in German translates loosely to “Rider of the Wave”.
