Category: Ron’s Friends and Family

Readers, I am so sorry to announce the news that Robert Tammen passed away last week. Robert was Ronald Tammen’s youngest brother, and the last living member of Ron’s immediate family. He was only 7 years old when Ron disappeared, so he didn’t have many memories of his big brother. Nevertheless, he, like Marcia, never stopped looking for Ron and wondering what might have happened to him. He was a frequent visitor to this website, and an occasional commenter as well. His comments were always insightful. Every so often, he’d email or call me with a new detail about his father or one of his brothers that he’d suddenly recalled, which was always welcome too. It was Robert who’d first told me about how Ron used to carry around a pack of cigarettes even though he didn’t smoke. As you can imagine, this is a huge, heartbreaking loss.

I first met Robert Tammen on Wednesday, October 10, 2012. We met on Crete, a gorgeous Greek island that he’d called home for many years as part of his lifelong career with the U.S. Air Force. He suggested that we meet at Mama’s Place, an open-air restaurant on Stavros Beach, where they filmed the last scene of Zorba the Greek. The restaurant was a short drive from the beautiful home he and his wife—who was also Greek—shared on a hillside covered with olive trees and brilliant pink-flowered shrubs. 

It always amazes me when two people who live on different sides of the globe are able to set an 11 a.m. appointment and actually keep it. The day was sunny with a light breeze. The sky was—well, to be honest, I don’t think we have that color of blue in the States. Certainly, not in Ohio. Robert had been afraid that it would rain and that we’d have to change our plans—it had stormed severely the night before—but that wasn’t necessary. It was perfect.

With the Sea of Crete as a backdrop, we sat down at a table and ordered a couple beers. Mind you, this was 2012, so I still had a lot to learn about Ron’s case. Nevertheless, I’d managed to uncover a few surprising details by then and I had a bunch of questions I wanted to run by him. I asked him if he had any idea why Ron was fingerprinted as a child. I asked him if he remembered Ron having dissociative episodes in which he forgot who he was and went wandering. I asked him if he remembered an incident occurring one summer day in 1952—described in a letter as THAT day by Mr. Tammen—when Ron was on the clock working for the city of Maple Heights. I asked him if he thought Ron might have been gay.

He gave each some thought and answered no, no, no, and maybe.

I recited all the theories that had been raised over the years, and asked him what he thought about each. Some he said were feasible; others he considered far-fetched.

We talked about other topics too…about four hours’ worth in all.

So this week, as I was reflecting on what to write about Robert, I decided to revisit that conversation, just to see how things may have changed since that day. Near the end, probably well into our third hour, I asked Robert what he thought had happened to Ron. 

Paint me a picture, I said.

I still can’t believe what he said in response. It was nearly 12 years ago, and I was still two years away from finding key documents that support my running theory that Tammen’s former psychology professor, St. Clair Switzer, was recruited by the CIA for Project Artichoke, and he likely had something to do with Ron’s disappearance. Even so, Robert pretty much hit the nail on the head. 

Here’s a short excerpt of that conversation that you can listen to as well as read the transcript.

Excerpt of an interview with Robert Tammen

10/10/2012

JW: So…I guess…paint for me, and I know you’ve been kind of going through this. Paint for me the scenario that you see, right now, where do you think what happened…in your mind?

RT: In my mind?  One of two things. FBI or CIA got him. CIA? Sent him overseas and he became a spy. FBI? I don’t know what they would have done…States, here? I don’t know. That’s what I consider…

JW: In the book Oblivion, [Richard Cox] did become a spy. He died at NIH, which is wild. He had cancer, and he died at our clinical center, which was like, oh my God! But, the FBI was involved, because they were looking for him, because he was a West Point student. That never happens. And then because he joined the CIA, they were called off. So basically they were like right on his heels and they were called off. And I just wondered if that’s the same kind of thing…Did J. Edgar…

RT: Yeah, those are the only two things that I can think of. I don’t know what else he would have…I don’t see anything else that he would just arbitrarily go off.

JW: He was too responsible.

RT:  What would he have done?

JW: I know. Like you said, he was..

RT: Like I say, it’s kind of hard to believe…I can see him staging the room.

JW: Yeah.

RT: But why would you leave your wallet? Your keys, your bass fiddle? I mean that was his money maker.

JW: Yeah, your toothbrush…

RT: And why would he leave the car? Come on, if it’s a staged thing, at least you would take the vehicle. Nothing else. Fine, leave your IDs. But that’s why it’s either got to be…to me, I lean toward the CIA because they would tell you, “just leave your stuff there.” FBI wouldn’t, “no, take your IDs and everything like that. We’ll destroy it.” CIA would just say, walk away from it, and…

JW: We’ll handle it.

RT: But, you know, even when you have temporary lapses of memory, you forget stuff, you don’t forget important stuff like that. And if you do, you go back to get it. Right? Those are the only two scenarios that I can see. He wouldn’t just walk off arbitrarily. And go where?

JW: Right. No body’s been found. I mean it’s like, how can you…?

RT: I know. And at that time, you know the weather wasn’t that great. In fact, it was a little bit chilly, wasn’t it?

JW: It was cold. It was snowing. 

RT: So, you mean to tell me that the weather elements, stuff like that, wouldn’t get to him? So…somebody was waiting for him somewhere. Yet how many claims were there even a couple days afterwards that they said that they saw him? Like that woman who said he knocked on the door? When was that?

JW: That was around midnight, that night.

RT: Midnight. But I remember…wasn’t there a couple days later that somebody said they thought they saw him somewhere?

JW: There were, yeah, like hitchhiking…

RT: Up in Hamilton, or some place like that?

JW: Right. Exactly. They disproved those, or they said they did. But if she saw him, that’s what bugs me, because if it was the CIA…

RT: Right, you said Hamilton earlier with this woman [the older woman]. And I’m wondering…hmmm….and nobody knows who this…they don’t know her name, or anything like that?

JW: Nothing.

RT: Maybe she was involved.

JW: Right. I looked to see if there was a missing…anything of a missing woman back in that rough time, and I’m not finding that.

RT: Of course, it doesn’t have to be a missing woman.

JW: Yeah? Exactly. Not if she was a go-between…

RT: If she’s part of the government and doing anything that’s….they’ll never report her missing or anything like that. She’ll be covered. She’s Miss so-and-so from here, or anything like that, but she’s not missing, so. That could be a possibility. But I still think the FBI or CIA were involved.

Note: the woman Robert is speaking of is someone from Hamilton or Middletown that Ron’s freshman roommate had told me about. He said that she was an “older woman” who used to visit Ron as a freshman and drive him places in her car. At this point, I hadn’t yet learned about a woman from Hamilton who’d allegedly driven Ron away from Fisher Hall the night of his disappearance.

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Over the years, people have asked me what members of the Tammen family have thought about my research and the direction in which it’s been heading. Not only was Robert Tammen receptive to my findings, he was thinking along these lines way before me. 

May he rest in peace.

July 23rd would be Ron Tammen’s 88th birthday if he’s still living. To commemorate the day, I thought it would be fitting to discuss one of the more complicated and, as it turns out, pivotal figures in Ron’s life—his mother, Marjorie. 

Of all the members of Ronald Tammen’s family, Marjorie Tammen is the one that people have been most reluctant to speak openly about—the one we’ve all been tiptoeing around. Throughout her married life, whenever Marjorie’s name came up in conversation, details would have likely been dodged and euphemisms employed. Only the nonverbals (the head shakes, the tsks) would convey the simple truth. I’m sure some people judged her as unfit. Others, usually women, felt deep sympathy for her. All too soon, her three oldest sons—John, Ronald, and Richard—considered her weak and unworthy of their respect. She embarrassed them.

It had to do with all the drinking. Even when her three oldest boys were small, and well before Ron went missing, Marjorie Tammen had an addiction to alcohol. Her day drinking affected her housekeeping and other wife and mom duties, which in those days had no end. Her dependency seeped into every crevice of her life. It’s what she died of at the age of 52—not of a broken heart, as some would say, but of cirrhosis of the liver. There. I said it. Now you know.  

But addictions of any sort don’t define who we are. We’re a person first; the disease comes in at a distant second. And there’s always a starting point—there’s always a reason.

One of Marjorie’s main strengths lay in her family, where the bonds were tight and the safety net vast. It was Marjorie’s side of the family that supplied the relatives who were most influential to Ron and his siblings as they were growing up—the relatives they would go to for help without a moment’s hesitation, the people they tried to emulate. 

And even though she embarrassed them, Marjorie’s three oldest sons would have been hard pressed to find a fiercer advocate for them. Which parent went running to school every time Richard bullied his way into a fresh world of trouble? Marjorie did. Who took it upon herself to call the Cleveland office of the FBI—the FBI!—to tell them about her son who’d gone missing while he was away at college? Marjorie. Who gave those FBI guys Ron’s fingerprints in 1953 to help with their investigation—the fingerprints she’d saved on a card since 1941? I’m sure it was Marjorie, since she’d mentioned those prints in an interview with a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter in 1960. 

Say what you will about Marjorie, she wasn’t afraid to throw on a coat or pick up a phone in the interest of her kids.

Marjorie was born Marjorie Jane McCann on September 4, 1911, in Sharon, PA, less than 20 miles from Youngstown, OH, near the western edge of the Pennsylvania border. She was the baby of the family. Her brother John was three years older than she was and her sister Mary was one year older. When Mary was a toddler, she came down with polio, a deadly disease that, happily, was eradicated in the United States and throughout most of the world by a vaccine. (Speaking of vaccines, are you fully vaccinated against Covid-19 yet? If not, please do your part pronto. Personally, there’s no way I’d want to face the delta variant unvaccinated. And until there’s a vaccine for the under-12 crowd, I’ll still be masking indoors. Here’s that link again. Thank you for coming to my TED tirade. I’m afraid we don’t have time for questions.) 

Mary’s bout with polio left her with a severe limp that lasted her whole life. Marjorie was her sister’s helper, especially during the hard early years, which cemented the bond between them. When Mary became a career woman with no kids of her own, her “favorite aunt” status was elevated to an art form—practically to the point of being an auxiliary mom. She was a giver—of her time, her money, whatever she had—and what she didn’t have to give, she’d loan to them. The latter included her car if the Tammen family needed to drive beyond where the city bus would take them. Among Ron’s siblings with whom I’ve had the chance to speak, Aunt Mary’s name was the one most frequently mentioned when they described the people who were there for them as children. 

The McCanns moved from Pennsylvania to Lakewood, Ohio, in 1922, when father Albert was hired to work for an electrical company. Soon, he’d get a job in elevator manufacturing and would learn the ups and downs of that trade. Floranell, Marjorie’s mother, worked in a profession nearer and dearer to my heart: she was a librarian at the Cleveland Public Library as well as the Western Reserve Medical Library.

Albert and Floranell McCann

When it was time to start thinking about college, Marjorie’s brother John chose Miami University, thus setting the whole Miami legacy train into motion. By 1933, John McCann had received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in business at Miami. Two years later, he married a fellow Miami grad, Eleanora Handschin, who’d studied psychology there. John’s and Eleanora’s ties to Miami were especially tight, since Eleanora’s father, Charles Hart Handschin, was a renowned German professor at Miami, and he and his wife Helena lived in Oxford. In 1934, Mary graduated from Miami in home economics education, which prepared her for a lifelong career in teaching. Marjorie would attend Miami too, and she would also study home economics, though she wouldn’t graduate. (More on that in a bit.) And of course, three of Marjorie’s five children—Ron, then Richard, and later Marcia—would attend Miami. (When Ron was at Miami, he was known to visit the Handschins, whose home was behind the Delta Tau Delta house.)

In June 1929, Marjorie graduated from Lakewood High School. Her yearbook photo shows a cute grinning girl in a flapper haircut beneath which were three adjectives the yearbook staff felt summed her up best: mutable, jocular, and modest. Jocular and modest are great traits for any high schooler, but if Marjorie was mutable in any way, I’d say it was photographically. Whereas Mary usually looked the same way in photos—elegant and beautiful—Marjorie seemed to morph into someone else over the years. Still, she usually smiled. 

Say what you will about Marjorie, she would smile for the camera, even when she was hurting.

Speaking of photographs, it probably goes without saying that Ron Tammen, Sr.—the soon-to-be love of Marjorie’s life—was handsome. Whether he was a young man with deep-set eyes in his 20s, or a Ronald Colman clone in his 30s and 40s, or a graying Mr. Chips-type in his 50s and upward, the man never seemed to take a bad picture. Marjorie met him at a dance when she was a freshman at Miami and he was playing in a band that had rolled into town for the night. Let’s just say that it was part kismet and part pyrotechnics that brought the two of them together. The fact that he was wailing away on a sax when she first laid eyes on him didn’t hurt one bit.

Marjorie was younger than Ron Sr. by four years, which at that stage of life was considerable. She decided not to return to Miami the following year, and in the words of Johnny and June Carter Cash, she and Ron Sr. “got married in a fever” and were indeed “hotter than a pepper sprout” for each other. They were married on January 31, 1931, though not everyone was happy about it.

“Grandfather McCann was very rigorously and religiously Catholic,” John Tammen once told me, and he “wouldn’t let her get married. And so my mother and father had to elope.”

The way John told it, Albert had wanted Marjorie to wait until Mary got married, since Mary was older, but I think there may have been more to the story. In our first interview, Marcia Tammen had recalled that Ron Sr. was raised as a Christian Scientist, which wouldn’t sit well with Albert. Back then, religions didn’t do a lot of commingling. Unless he became Catholic, I can’t imagine that Ron Sr. would have ever been a suitable mate as far as Albert was concerned. Marjorie probably thought it would be hopeless to try to convince her father otherwise. Besides, if Marjorie had abided by Albert’s rule to merrily wait for Mary to marry, Marjorie’s life would’ve been on pause until 1955, when Aunt Mary became Mrs. Edward Spehar.

So they eloped. And by “eloped,” I mean they got married in Mr. Tammen’s home on Ednolia Avenue in Lakewood, officiated by a local Presbyterian minister. Although the marriage license says she was 21, Marjorie was only 19—barely—by four months. It was a premeditated fib. According to Ohio marriage law at that time, Marjorie would have needed parental permission, which she most certainly did not have, if she’d given her true age. 

Say what you will about Marjorie, she had a mind of her own.

I know what you’re thinking, and relax, everyone. It appears as though they made things right with the state of Ohio sometime after John was born. Also, I guess lying about one’s age on a marriage license was somewhat of a thing in those days. There’s even a Dick Van Dyke episode where Laura Petrie had lied about her age when she married Rob and they had to get married a second time. (You may want to watch the two-part episode sometime. I forgot how funny that show was, but then Carl Reiner was one of the best screenwriters ever.) [Part 1: Laura’s Little Lie; Part 2: Very Old Shoes, Very Old Rice]

We already know that times were hard during those years. It was the Depression, after all. Most people had it hard. Ron Sr. hadn’t gone to college, so he taught himself the skill of actuarial science, how to calculate risk in the insurance business. He landed himself a job as an insurance adjuster, which helped during the lean years.

But there was another hardship. Back then, people had fewer options available to them for birth control, especially if they’d been raised Catholic. Mr. and Mrs. Tammen’s method may well have been something akin to keeping track of the days of the month and hoping for the best. Turns out, whatever method they were using wasn’t foolproof. Each year of marriage would yield another brand new baby boy. On May 25, 1932, John was born. Five months later, Marjorie was pregnant again with Ron Jr. Six and a half months after giving birth to Ron, she was once again pregnant, this time with Richard. For someone in her early 20s, it was a lot—too much really. John seemed to think that this was the reason that his mother began drinking. There were too many rambunctious boys running around the house. 

“Our mother was really very ill-prepared to handle us,” said John. We just absolutely drove her crazy from the time we were up and walking until our middle teenage years when kids begin to get focused on other things in life… Because we were forever into doing stuff. We were very active. We drove my mother really nuts. We literally drove her to drink.”

Maybe. Or it could have been a thought planted deep in Marjorie’s psyche, as if she’d convinced herself that her prolific baby-making ability was the sole reason that the family was struggling. As if she alone was the problem. At least that was the opinion of one woman who knew both Marjorie and Mr. Tammen well. 

According to the woman, after Marjorie had the three boys, Mr. Tammen basically turned off. He criticized Marjorie for not using protection, she said. The woman recalled another person who’d felt the same way—as if Marjorie’s morale had been broken.

If Marjorie felt responsible for the family’s financial burdens, she must have also felt guilty about her inability to bring home a paycheck. It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to work. In 1930, before she got married, Marjorie had been a librarian, just like her mother. (Marjorie loved to read.) But how could she get a job when she needed to tend to three preschoolers?

Marjorie thought of an alternative. She knew how to sew. In the years that followed, she sewed clothes for all of her children—first for the three boys, then Marcia, and later Robert. She mastered sleeves and collars, pant legs and pockets, pleats and hems, not to mention the accompanying buttonholes and zippers. Marjorie sewed up a storm, and, as a result, her kids always stood out from the others. Marjorie’s kids looked amazing.

Say what you will about Marjorie, if she had no other means to help out, she’d go straight to her wheelhouse.

Things probably improved for John, Ron, and Richard as they got older and were working in various jobs away from home. I have no doubt that they loved their mother. And yet I can also imagine them looking forward to the day when they’d be heading to college and no longer living with her. To be able to invite a friend over on the fly or to walk home from class without a feeling of dread would be motivation enough to move to a school several hours away. 

John’s memory is harsh. In a letter he wrote to Marcia in 2014 discussing the family’s most difficult years, he said: “Because of [Mom’s] bad habits, poor organization of the house, and what we saw and [sic] an almost total lack of caring for us, we all came to usually disregard what she said so that she had no effective control over what we did, where we went, and when we returned; we became almost emancipated at 15, 14, and 13.”

“Almost emancipated,” he said. Almost. Because despite all the sadness that the Tammen brothers had to endure—despite learning to adapt to Marjorie’s varying degrees of normal—they also knew that they could rely on Marjorie’s mother Floranell and sister Mary, both of whom lived nearby. (Albert McCann died in 1944.)

And even though he was farther away, Ron Jr.’s end-all, be-all role model, his influencer uncle, also maintained a strong connection with them. Uncle John McCann is probably one of the main reasons Ron chose to attend Miami. I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog site that Uncle John had sold bonds, which is why Ron felt that he wanted to have a career in bonds too. Uncle John was a business major; Ron was a business major. But John McCann was also a highly decorated colonel in the U.S. Air Force, which probably impressed Ron a great deal. Here are just a few of Uncle John McCann’s impressive military credentials:

• Col. McCann worked in intelligence with the Army Air Corps during World War II.
• In 1950, at the start of the Korean War, he was called back to the Air Force Reserves as an executive officer of a troop carrier wing in Greenville, South Carolina. 
• He later joined  the Air University’s War College at Maxwell Air Force Base (AFB), first as a faculty member, and later as vice commandant. 
• In the mid 1960s, he was deputy commandant of the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright Patterson AFB. 
• Col. McCann is buried in Arlington National Cemetery (Section 60) with his wife Eleanora. 
• Miami University’s Air Force ROTC has a scholarship in Col. McCann’s name.

Weirdly enough, Ron’s Uncle John died on April 20 in 1995, one day after the 42^nd anniversary of Ron’s disappearance from Uncle John’s alma mater. His children were great friends to the Tammens, their closest cousins. They’ve remained in touch with one another to this day.

I think we all know how Ron’s disappearance affected Marjorie. It devastated her, but I’d argue that it didn’t destroy her. She still had Marcia and Robert living at home—ages 10 and 7—and there was no way she could give up then. She also wanted to keep looking for Ron, which she vowed to do, granting interviews about her son when reporters asked and quickly responding to the periodic FBI letters asking whether Ron had been located yet or was he still missing. (Answer: always B.)

Family photos in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Click on photos for more info.

On September 30, 1962, Marcia’s 20^th birthday, Marjorie Tammen wrote her daughter a letter. As usual, the resources available to her were limited. No Hallmark Greetings here—just a sheet of stationery with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen letterhead (Mr. Tammen’s workplace), and a blue ink pen. 

Dearest Marcia,

By the time you recieve [sic] this you will be twenty. First and foremost, “Happy Birthday.” 

I am not sure you are aware how older people tend to reflect. Now by “older” I don’t mean those with a foot in the grave.

But September 30^th has always held a special meaning for me. That was the day it was our good fortune to be blessed with a girl.

As you have progressed through the years, we have seen you develop so well.

As of Oct. 1th [sic], you will take a step again toward the future. This is the day you leave your teens and enter the twenties. This is not a large step but just approaching the future.

If your next twenty years will see you develop as well as the first twenty, you will be fulfilling all that can be asked of anyone.

So again to you, Marcia, the very happiest of birthdays. With this goes all the love of all of us.

Love, Mama

P.S. This doesn’t mean I won’t fight with you tomorrow. Mama

Here’s what I love about this letter: First, it came from Marjorie’s heart. She had no idea what to give her daughter on this momentous day, so she grabbed a sheet of stationery from a drawer and she wrote. Because feelings are free. 

Second, the letter held so much meaning for Marcia, she saved it until the day she died. Do you have a card stored away from your 20^th birthday? Yeah, me neither.

And best of all, 9 ½ years after her golden-boy son had disappeared and about 1 ½ years before she would die, Marjorie Tammen was still able to joke around with her daughter. 

So, say what you will about Marjorie. 

But she was still jocular, still modest, still mutable, and she still had some fight in her, right to the end.

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Many of these photos and stories were part of Marcia Tammen’s genealogy files and were graciously shared with me by Marcia’s forever friend Jule Miller, who was practically a family member herself. Other photos were shared with me by one of Ron’s cousins, and I thank her so much for them. The remaining stories I obtained from interviews and additional research.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Despite the fact that (hopefully) most of us have adjusted our usual Thanksgiving plans and are keeping things small and meaningful this year, it’s still my favorite holiday. To commemorate this tumultuous year, I encourage you to use the comments section to tell us how you are—or aren’t—spending the holiday due to covid-19. (Send pics too!) I’ll go first: we won’t be making our annual trek to NYC to visit my brother and his partner this year. It sucks—it really, really does. But, for the good of the country, we’ll just have to wait until 2021 for my brother’s stupendous stuffin’ muffins (see my Thanksgiving 2018 post for recipe).

But I also have a surprise for you: an editorial on the topic of Thanksgiving that’s brought to us by our very own Ronald Tammen. So cool, right?? When Ron was a senior at Maple Heights High School, he oversaw the editorial page of the student paper, the Maple Heights Herald. Although I can’t say with 100% certainty that Ron wrote all of the editorials while he was in charge, they do sound a lot like Ron—or how I picture Ron’s writings to sound: serious and responsible and loaded with patriotism and advice about the importance of hard work to better oneself. If he didn’t write an editorial for a particular issue, at the very least, he would have given it a final polish and stamp of approval. But this one totally sounds like something he wrote.

The editorial I’m sharing with you was published 70 years ago—on November 16, 1950—and it certainly sounds that way in places. Plus, there’s nothing like reading the deep and earnest and not-quite-gelled thoughts of a high schooler on deadline. To provide additional perspective, in June of that year, the United States had entered into the Korean War. For a young man like Ron who would be registering for the draft in eight short months, the world was getting scary. (And if you think this editorial sounds somber, just give a read to this excerpt from the one he ran at Christmas: “As conditions are shaping in Korea, the atomic bomb may well be brought into use. And, if it is, assuredly, there are those of us who may not be around to celebrate the next Yuletide.”) Yikes. Despite the differences between then and now, some aspects still ring familiar, and, for this reason, I thought it would be worth posting.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

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Holliday [sic] Explains America

Thanksgiving is a simple word—as simple and straightforward as the small band of Pilgrims who first gave it meaning over 300 years ago. They had given up every bit of security and even risked their very lives to come to America. And why did they sacrifice almost everything? They believed in having freedom from tyranny and despotism and were willing to give anything for this privilege.

Those first few years were very painful for the Pilgrims and they faced hardships never before encountered. Some died while they were in sight of shore and were buried before there was even thought of shelter. The Pilgrims had determination however, and still more important they had faith in God and in themselves. They had faith that if they worked hard enough things would brighten and take a turn for the better. They had faith in an ideal and nothing that happened would sway them from it.

Little by little they gathered strength and with the help of the friendly Indians, they were able to produce a crop large enough to maintain life. It was decided to set aside a day in which they could all feast and give thanks to the Lord for helping them.

It would be well for us to compare this Thanksgiving with the first one, in that we are experiencing a similar sense of uncertainty. Progress has changed our way of living, but we are still devoting our strength and faith to the same principles of freedom. We are the Pilgrims of the twentieth century and must stand as firm as they for our beliefs. Thus is Thanksgiving—the holiday that explains America.

Dear AGMIHTF family,

I’m heartbroken to share the news of the passing of Marcia Tammen, Ronald’s only sister. Marcia died this morning of complications from a chronic health condition. She would have been 78 on September 30.

Marcia was only ten years old when Ron disappeared, but she carried his memory and the hope of finding him with her all her life.

On the day of her brother’s disappearance, Marcia had won a framed print at her church after memorizing 18 verses of the Bible. The print was of Christ at Heart’s Door, by Warner Sallman. On the back, her teacher had written: “Only one life—‘Twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” Marcia kept that print with her for the next 67 years.

Marcia was my go-to source and confidante as I was conducting my research about Ron, and she was always open to whatever information I sent her way. A couple times each year, we’d meet up at Wendy’s or Bob Evans’ near her home, and I’d fill her in on updates. She’d listen intently to what I had to say, taking meticulous notes, and then would usually respond with, “Well…that sounds interesting. Keep up the good work.” She was warm, kind, and unflappable in a Midwestern sort of way.

The last time I saw her was this past February, just before the coronavirus impacted all of our lives. She was interviewed in her apartment by a Cincinnati TV reporter about Ron’s disappearance, and did a beautiful job sharing her thoughts about her family’s loss. The segment never aired because of COVID-19, but I’m so glad that we had the chance to do it. After our interviews, Marcia, her roommate Jule, and I drove to a local diner and had lunch together and gabbed like old friends. On the drive home, Marcia wanted me to look at a building I was driving by and she suddenly raised her arm to point it out. I thought she was telling me to take a quick left, and I jerked the wheel and very nearly rolled the car. Usually, she kept a straight face with me, but this time, she started cracking up, again, like an old friend. That was cool.

Every time someone associated with the Tammen mystery passes away, I feel as if I’ve let that person down. I really wanted to solve this in time. In fact, I’ve always pictured throwing a big party, and getting us all together, hopefully with Ron showing up as the main attraction. This one hurts so much.

Here’s a link to Marcia’s obituary. Many thanks to Jule Miller, Brenda Battista Green, and Cassidy Conway for sharing your memories of her with me.

ADDENDUM:

As Marcia’s obituary states, everyone loved Marcia’s macaroni salad, and she could be counted on to make it whenever the situation called for it—picnics, BBQs, birthdays, you name it. With the help of Jule Miller, we’ve recreated her recipe here. I think the olives and the radishes are what puts it over the top.