Bruce Skidmore
I am grateful to have been alerted to this obituary. I got to know Ron while we were in the same Quorum together for four years. Despite having years ago lost any way to to stay in touch, of the many people I have known over the years, Ron always has stood out in my memory of someone I was glad to have known - someone by whom I was made better by knowing them. Although the following speaks more directly of Jody, they were a pair, and I don't know of anyone else to whom I could compare to Ron. I look forward to the four of us getting together again in the future.
I wish to share something my wife Linda (who passed away just over a year ago) wrote about our time with the Maloufs (which I hope will give satisfaction now to Jody as well):
When we lived in Plano, 1988-1992, we moved into a Ward where we knew no one, on the basis of their reputation as having a strong youth program. Nonetheless, and despite our encouragement to son Micah, for example, that he would be welcomed into scouts, he was not even acknowledged by the Scoutmaster on his first visit. All of us faced challenges during this started-to-be-a-six-month assignment that ran four years. It was a wealthy area and we were outclassed. Our daughter Gwenn had a very hard time, since she didn’t have closets full of the latest fashions. Jody Malouf was assigned as my visiting teacher, and she soon was coming over for much more than the minimal monthly visit. When this story was later related to two of Gwenn's daughters, they recognized the “Jody” line of clothing. Jody Malouf was that Jody. She was very involved, with Ron her husband, in high level affairs. They came, for example, to BYU annually to attend a banquet for the directors of the BYU Entrepreneurial school. Both Ron and Jody had been in previous marriages and had a large number of children, in a yours-mine-&-ours family. Many of the children had difficulties growing out of the divorces. So they had personal struggles they’d been through too. But Jody and I grew very close. When I went down to help Meagan (a daughter-in-law living in the Dallas area) after Abby was born in June of 2003, while Micah (her husband) was doing his internship at his law firm, despite having been gone for 11 years, and Jody having no prior notice I was coming, she cleared her always-full schedule and took me out to lunch every day I was there. She took me to Whole Foods Market. I don‘t know why she did it, but she was that kind of person. She told me things about her life – things I don’t think she told other people, and I don’t know why. She was such a good person; such a good friend. When she had ten or fifteen minutes between appointments, she would go to the Temple and fold laundry. She didn’t waste a minute of her mortality. I don’t think I’ll ever know someone like her again. I don’t think there is any one like her.
Ron and Jody are both people who leave good marks on the lives of others they meet. - Bruce Skidmore
