Ronald Melvin Hartgrove was born on June 7, 1951, in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of three children to Vermell Dow and Theodore Hartgrove, with whom he shared a middle name. He and his two siblings, Cassandra Maria and Clarke Theodore, all attended Our Lady of Victory Elementary School in their Bedford-Stuyvesant hometown. Ronnie (as he was affectionately called) also served as an altar boy for the church.

The loving family moved to a welcoming white corner house on 201st Street in Hollis, Queens, in 1961. When he wasn’t attending Saint Pascal Baylon High School, Ronnie would get into mischief with his older brother and practice trick shots on his dad’s pool table. As the youngest in the house, he naturally called himself “The Kid” and “Ron The Hon.”

Ronald idolized Davy Crockett as a boy but soon outgrew the cowboy icon in favor of Superman. It was a fitting hero—like The Man Of Steel, Ronnie was blessed with a medley of talents from athletic (he loved to compete on both tennis and basketball courts) to creative (drawing and painting were solitary pastimes) to intellectual (his mind was sharp enough to solve even the most complex arithmetic problems).

After attending college at Tuskegee Institute, Ronnie returned home to New York. It’s here, in 1981, where he met the love of his life, Remella Margarita Foy, who lived right across the street. That same year they moved upstate to Mount Vernon, where he worked at Westchester Animal Hospital before beginning an 11-year stint with the United States Postal Service in 1984. He and Remella married on June 6, 1986, months after welcoming their first child, Shamika Veronica Hartgrove on January 2. They had their second daughter, Lisha Margarita Hartgrove, on October 11, 1989.

The family returned to Queens in 1991. Ronnie, who regularly read The Bible, joined the male choir at Grace United Methodist Church, watched his two children that he adored grow into beautiful women and spent time with his parents during their final days. He was a station agent for the Metropolitan Transit Authority from 2008 to 2016, but he enjoyed passing his downtime watching sci-fi movies, playing card games like Spades and Bid Whist, and listening to music. Artists like The Beatles and jazz greats of his parents’ day—John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington—were his favorites.

Ronnie was a relentless jokester, always armed with a wisecrack. He loved to make people laugh with a running gag about an unseen guy named Bob, “yo’ mama” quips, his “quit while you’re ahead” and “ya know?!” punchlines, and, in his later years, jokes about his fading memory—a condition he humorously called “CRS.”

Ronald is survived by his two children, Shamika and Lisha; wife Remella; sister Cassandra; three nieces and two nephews. He joins his mother and father, as well as his older brother Clarke in the Kingdom of God. Ronald will forever be missed by his friends, family and the countless people he made smile during his time on Earth.

Lovingly submitted by the family.

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