My name is Ron Chatman, a gift from my parents bestowed upon my birth.  It's the only thing I will carry with me from cradle to grave and I am fiercely proud of it.  But one thing that I have kept in the back of my mind was that my name was unique.

My experience in grade school, teen years and college gave me no reason to believe otherwise.  Swimming in larger and larger oceans, I was the only Ron Chatman that I'd run into.  Then I fell into the biggest ocean of all...the Internet.  And came face to cyber face with my doppelganger.

While I staked a claim in the broadcast arena, another Ron Chatman was excelling at ollies, kickflips and other skating arcana.  While I cracked the microphone and built a career as one of a few African-Americans working in country radio, this other Ron was tearing it up on the skateboard curcuit.

I don't know this other Ron, but he seems like a nice enough guy.  I keep running into articles where people talk about their chance encounters with him, which he seems to take with the grace and ease of someone who has nothing to prove to the world because he's done it all.  Of course, being the idol of a generation of skaters is probably a fun existence.  At the very least, I would imagine that his bar tab gets picked up when he's in the company of people who've heard of "World Industries."

If you want to find out more about Ron Chatman the skater, here are some links to articles and videos where he's featured.  If you happen to meet him, tell him I said hello.  I would like to meet him one day...