Ron Vodenichar ’77 may have been a business and management major in college, but his favorite classes were in theology.
As a lifelong Lutheran, Ron considered himself well-schooled in the Catholic Church when he arrived at what then was the College of Steubenville.
“I found that I knew more about the Catholic faith than the guys I was sitting in the classroom with,” he recalls. “I enjoyed that, and I had a lot of good debates with priests. Those were the most memorable and enjoyable courses I took in school.”
He even opted to take additional theology classes after completing the twocourse requirement.
Meanwhile, he stayed on track with his business studies, landing jobs after graduation with waterline construction and tire companies. He soon found his niche, however, in the newspaper business when he took a position as a district manager in the circulation department of the Steubenville Herald-Star, which then was owned by Thomson Newspapers.
Ron later became circulation director of another Thomson newspaper in Ohio, the Lancaster Eagle Gazette, before returning to the Herald-Star. After a year and a half there, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri, for a position in Thomson’s corporate office, where he oversaw the operations of newly acquired papers. From there, he went to Ada, Oklahoma, to work for Thomson until he was offered a position in 1989 as publisher and general manager of Eagle Printing Co. in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I thought I would stay five years but ended up spending the rest of my career there,” he says.
Although he retired in March 2023 and now lives in Georgetown, Texas, Ron continues to serve as Eagle Printing’s board president. The company is a major printer of advertising for Macy’s and other department and grocery stores as well as the printer of newspapers, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Rocket at Pennsylvania’s Slippery Rock University.
Despite the influence of his Catholic-centered college theology studies, Ron has remained a Lutheran and went on to teach Sunday School for many years. He did, however, marry a Catholic he met on campus. They have been married 49 years and have 4 daughters and 13 grandchildren.
Linda Corton ’78 had come to Steubenville as a junior transfer student from West Virginia University, drawn to the school because of her involvement in the Catholic charismatic renewal. At the time, Ron was an orientation leader, which he says gave him the opportunity to meet the newest co-eds as they arrived on campus.
“I made myself Linda’s orientation leader, and we had our first date three months later.”
