Ronald Beeson Stone passed away on December 26, 2018. He was born on July 4, 1928 to Newman Russell Stone and Irene B. Stone at Midland Fillmore hospital in Buffalo, New York.

A graduate of Hutchinson High School in 1946 and New Mexico School of Mines in 1953 with a B.S. in Mining Engineering. He was also a veteran of the U.S. Air Force with a rank of Captain.

He married Margaret Jean Schell (Lewis) in August 1957 in a marriage that lasted 51 years until her death in January 2009.

He is survived by a step-daughter Ann. C. Waugh of Lenexa, KS and two grandsons Reid Jolly and Colin Waugh of Overland Park, KS and Independence, MO. A brother Donald C. Stone preceded him in death, but is survived by his wife Marlen M. Stone, a niece Debbie Calendoo and nephews Russell Stone and Lowell L. Stone.

He was an employee of Carey Salt Company for a total of 11 years as a mining engineer and rose to the title of Chief Engineer during this period. He moved to Westminster, Co. and worked for Stearns Rodger Mfg on the design of the Moab Utah Potash mine. His engineering career spanned a period of 52 years and included many construction and engineering projects. He worked for several companies during his career. He performed core drilling at Coty Blanc Island in Louisiana, Patrick Harrison, Inc. (Project Dribble, a nuclear test in Mississippi), the straight creek tunnel pilot bore for the Eisenhower tunnel in Colorado, and the Cabin Creek Pumped Storage Project. He was also employed by Fenix & Scisson, Inc of Tulsa, OK and performed various projects including a soft ground tunneling study for the Dept. of the Interior and a study of Oil Shale mining for the US Bureau of mines. He was later employed at Kaiser Engineering as a salt mining engineer and also as a consultant as a nuclear waste repository.

Ronald had many hobbies. He published a book, "A Soldiers Diary" about his father's travels throughout France as an Infantryman during WW I. He also loved airplanes and visited many air shows and took many pictures of the military planes he saw there. He was also a train enthusiast, and collected and built his model trains in his spare time. It also goes without saying that as a geologist, many of the family vacation pictures included pictures of rock formations showing the layering and the stratigraphy of the various outcrops. However, Ronald mostly loved his cat family that he and his wife Margaret raised, always caring for them and tending to their needs.

Burial will be on Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at Memorial Park Cemetery in Hutchinson, KS.