Ronald F. Carlson

Ron's Portraits:

Ronald F. Carlson

Portrait of her father, Ron Carlson, by Karen Scott 1988©
2007

My name is Ron Carlson and I am Karen Scott's father and the grandfather of Rachel Scott Freimark and Kristen Scott Horne. I was born and raised on the east side of Flint, Michigan. My siblings are a twin brother and a younger sister. My father worked for Chevrolet and my brother and I both worked for A.C. Spark Plug, I for forty years and my brother in Tool and Die for fifty years. I entered into an apprenticeship in tool and model making, working on prototype samples of instrument clusters for various GM cars. Shortly after completing my apprenticeship, I drew a pencil portrait of our model shop superintendent for his retirement. This caught the eye of the Staff Engineer in charge of Instrument Cluster Engineering. I continued to provide pencil portraits for retirees (about 250) until I retired as a Senior Project Engineer in 1988. I could not have had a better job - loved it! Karen, of course was exposed to these portraits over the years and my wife Carol and I encouraged her to express her self artistically. She took art classes in school even doing some ceramic objects. She is better than I doing pencil portraits and did one for me when I retired (Picture available) Instrument clusters manufactured at AC contain many plastic parts that have shapes and parting lines that are also necessary in the making of molds for dolls. For several years I made the doll molds for Carol and Karen until Karen started making them faster than I could so I lost that job. I take photographs of most anything, I am still doing portraits, I grow orchids and am involved in the hobby of building and flying antique gas model, free flight airplanes (very challenging). At my age of 80 years young, I now have to chase them on a 1971 Honda 90 motorcycle. My wife Dee and I are involved in many church activities as well as a Swedish fraternal organization called VASA. (See Ron's hobby page).

Ron's Interests: