Archives West Finding Aid

Ron was born in 1934 in Columbus, Nebraska. His mother was from a German farming family, and his father, three uncles and grandfather were all German Lutheran ministers. The family spoke German and English at home. Ron's formative years instilled him with a love for language, wordplay, and nature; and his Lutheran upbringing endowed him with a moral philosophy and a deep respect for the rule of law. Ron must have been born to work with fisheries. At an early age he was raising aquarium fish and treating their diseases for himself and other people.

He graduated from high school in Lincoln, then earned a B.Sc. from the University of Nebraska, majoring in Zoology and Botany. During this time, he served in the Air Force for nine years as an aircraft mechanic. This experience taught him a respect for preventive maintenance, which became part of his professional credo.

In 1958, he was employed by the USFWS Office of River Basin Studies to conduct biological surveys on the Susitna River system in the territory of Alaska. Ron told of a time he became lost in a wilderness bog of cotton grass, which was nearly impossible to walk on. He resolved to focus on one small goal at a time and said this was the moment he chose to "take control of the trail!" In 1961, he earned a master's in Fisheries Biology from USU. His first job was at the Missouri Conservation Commission, where he eventually became the first hatchery biologist for the state, then Assistant Chief of Hatcheries. Eventually Ron built the first fish disease laboratory for Missouri.

In 1966, Ron was recruited by the State of Utah as a Fish Pathologist/Nutritionist and director of the Experimental Hatchery in Logan, a job he did for 34 years. He was always grateful to his mentors in Missouri, who instilled in him concepts that would guide him to emphasize the health of the fisheries in Utah and the unification of methods for disease control. Ron taught fish disease as an adjunct at Utah State University for 12 years. He developed and published a system to quickly assess fish and watershed health, which he called the Fish Health Condition Profile (HCP). He worked with the Colorado River Wildlife Council to usher in the drainage or watershed concept of disease control. Later, the Great Lakes Commission, Eastern Seaboard states, and the Columbia River states followed suit. Ron served on the committee for 22 years. He saw his mission as one of stewardship of Utah's natural resources. When whirling disease appeared, Ron had an important political role in codifying a Fish Health Policy Board within the Utah Department of Agriculture, balancing the interests of stewardship and commodity.

Ron was an active leader in the American Fisheries Society and received numerous awards from ofttimes disparate groups. He always said it was because of his family origins - intellectuals on his father's side and farmers on his mother's, coupled with his upbringing in an immigrant culture that allowed him to connect with different people.

From Ron Goede's obituary