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Ronald V. Knapp was born in Windsor, Ontario to an Irish mother and spirited Seneca Indian father who burned their house down on his first birthday for payment by an insurance company for advertisement. When he was five years old, his Irish grandmother came to Canada, seized his mother and the three children, and took them under pursuit to Detroit to live with his grandparents. . That was the last contact he had with his father who moved to Montreal, owned the Blue Bonnet Race Track and the Upsal Chemical company, served as Under-Secretary of State for Prime Minister Pearson, got mixed up with the wrong people, and was murdered when Ron was 28. His grandfather, James J. O'Callaghan, was Henry Ford's first worker; and during the war his mother worked as Rosie the Riveter.
Ron attended Catholic schools and at 16 was a Holy Cross Brother for Notre Dame. He received too many letters from girls and went back to Detroit where his first job, while attending the University of Detroit, was with the U.S. Gypsom Company, measuring ship loads on the Great Lakes. He was drafted in 1961 and served in the U.S. Army during the Viet Nam era, even though he had dual citizenship. He spent the majority of his military service close to God and away from the front as Head Chaplin Assistant at Fort Lewis, Washington. He married and fathered six children while working and going part-time to school. When he finally graduated from Cal State Fullerton the Business Department acknowledged him as the student with the most responsibilities and had his whole family come up on the stage. For twenty years Ron worked as Plant Manager for McDonnell Douglas in Overhaul and Repair, with hundreds of DC9's and 10's under his supervision. He is the inventor of the Emergency Exit System currently in every commercial aircraft in the world.
In 1987 his resemblance to Mikhael Gorbachev catapulted him into a celebrity position that unfolded serendipitously. He was invited by Fox television to NYC for Good Day, New York with Gordon Eliot on the day that Gorbachev came to address the UN. Fox took him to New Jersey at 7:00 a.m. and had him knock on doors and talk to people. He was so successful that Fox hired a limo and took him to NYC with three TV cameras at the same time that Gorbachev's entourage was arriving. They had parallel parade routes, and Ron shook hands with thousands of New Yorkers who thought he was Gorbachev, including Donald Trump.
Maury Povich wrote about this incident in the back cover of his book, A Current Affair; on his TV show of the same name, played Rock the Wall, its first debut. In this arock video, written and produced by Ron and Adrian Windsor, Ron as Gorby II takes down the Berlin Wall by riding through it on a construction ball. West German and Soviet TV saw the video, made copies, and played it in their countries two years before the wall came down. The notoriety of the New York parade resulted in many TV appearances, among them Regis and Kathy Lee, The Gong Show, Current Affair, and six times as a Mighty Art Player on the Johnny Carson Show. Ron has the same birthmark on his arm that Gorbachev has on his forehead. He met Adrian Windsor on an Indian Reservation in New Mexico in 1985. She was there for an agricultural project, and he was attending a Pow Wow on the Pueblo Reservation. They have been together ever since.
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