Ron Korman, president of the Fern Valley Water District (FVWD) Board of Directors, is retiring from the board after 13 years of service. His term ends Dec. 4, but unless a special meeting is called, his last formal duty as president of the water district board will be closing the Nov. 18 meeting.

His future vacation plans — an extended trip — would cause him to miss multiple FVWD board meetings. That is the principal reason for his departure, he said.

Ron Korman. Photo by Marshall Smith
He and his wife, Sandy, plan to spend next summer driving and camping through the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and the Yukon Territory and then throughout Alaska. Although fun, those plans seem tame for a man who was the first Eagle Scout in the United States to earn all of Scouting’s 114 merit badges. He climbed the Matterhorn, the face of Tahquitz in the 1950s, homesteaded 80 acres in the wilds of north central Minnesota, served as chief of the National Ski Patrol in Minnesota and as an equestrian coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service Volunteer Association in Idyllwild. And, oh yes, Korman was valedictorian of his high school class, had a congressional appointment to the Naval Academy (he wound up going to University of California, Berkeley) and served during the Vietnam War as Officer of the Deck on the USS Midway.

Prior to moving to the Hill full-time, Korman, a native Californian and longtime Long Beach resident, was a corporate vice president with Control Data Corporation, one of the early supercomputer firms.

During his tenure on the FVWD board, Korman said he is proud of several achievements, including the acquisition of 11 acres along Tahquitz and Strawberry creeks, the drilling of two new wells and the siting of the maintenance and treatment facilities at the top of Fern Valley. He is also proud of FVWD’s network of wells, capacity for water storage and strong positioning for dealing with a major emergency.