Area Professor and Writer Falls in Love With His Characters

So you want to write that best-seller, believing that all a novelist needs is a word processor, a thesaurus - and "that little book inside" yourself that everyone supposedly has.
Dr. Russell Ramsey will quickly set you straight. It isn't that easy.
"Writing is similar to boxing," said the silver-haired but still fighting trim national security affairs professor at Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base. "Both are tough professions with very few at the top of the fight game or the literary world. Less than 100 make much money. Most people who box or write get their brains knocked out and earn practically nothing. The reality is that most boxers and writers need to have another source of income."
Ramsey's weekends are spent in his Albany, Ga., home with his wife Roberta, who works as an assistant to the vice president for academic affairs at Albany State College. During the week, a trailer outside Maxwell's Day Street serves as Ramsey's home and fortress of concentration for three hours of nightly head banging and writing.
But cry no tears for this writer. His passion for the written word has continued to grow since he peddled his first work to families of World War II troops as a 9-year-old boy in Sandusky, Ohio. After graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1957 with a bachelor's in science and engineering, Ramsey wrote books on military subjects. In 1969, after a paratrooping accident and a tour of duty in Vietnam, Ramsey retired from the Army and has since found literary success with his sports articles and in the fickle arena of the paperback novel.
Though far from approaching the best-seller lists, Ramsey's story of a female Olympic swimmer fared well enough to justify two sequels.
"I developed a special love for this character," he said. "I don't think you can create a fictional figure, work with her for any length of time and not fall in love. My character, Angela Weber, became a daughter figure to me when she won the gold medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin in the first book, A Lady, A Champion. In A Lady, A Healer, Angela - now a middle-aged lady - became the counterpart to my wife, and transformed into both a world leader and a queenly figure in A Lady, A Peacemaker."
He didn't develop his character through mere daydreaming or divine inspiration. Ramsey did a complete character from the women swimmers he interviewed for articles published in Swimming World. One of these athletes, Marjorie Gestring, who won the diving medal at the 1936 Olympics, went further in telling her story than the writer dared to hope.
"This American swimmer became the youngest Olympic champion every at age 13, but failed to qualify for the 1948 games," Ramsey said. "Reporters slammed microphones in her face, asking how it felt to be around young girls who weren't even around when she won her first gold in 1936. She simply answered, 'They beat me.' Forty years later, when I interviewed her, she told me what really happened. She'd broken her back falling from a 48-foot wooden tower while entertaining soldiers."
This wasn't the only time when Ramsey's careful prodding uncovered a story within a story. After seeing "Chariots of Fire" in 1983, he became fascinated with Eric Liddell, the Scottish runner who refused to compete on Sundays for religious reasons in the 1924 Olympics in Paris.
But before he could begin, Ramsey had to recover from neck surgery that resulted from his paratrooping accident. Then, he was ready to dig.
"My vocal cords were damaged after the surgery, but I miraculously got my voice back three months later. I began asking myself lots of questions.
"Then I found this incredible man who was an Olympic champion but refused to compromise his beliefs. He gave it all up to become a missionary in China. When the war began, he could have left the country, but he sent his wife and children home and entered a prisoner-of-war camp where he died of a brain tumor. Everyone I talked to in his homeland, Scotland, told me there was more to his story than the movie told."
The result was God's Joyful Runner, one of many sports pieces Ramsey has published. His latest, Circles and Wings, is featured in the May issue of Airman magazine. Circles and Wings is a detailed history of military members in the Olympics.
Teamwork between the writer and a heavyweight boxing champion resulted in The Gentle Giant, a story about George Foreman that appeared in Amateur Boxer. Ramsey met the still active fighter while working with the Job Corps in Oregon.
"Foreman was a tough, street-wise kid who was hauled into juvenile court and forced to go to jail or the Job Corps," Ramsey said. "A boxing trainer saw that he was super fast and a terrific slugger and added him to his team. Foreman practically knocked every opponent out of the ring and went on to win the gold medal in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. But what impressed me the most was what he did after receiving his medal. While two other black athletes raised their fists in protest, Foreman paraded around the ring with an American flag."
Ramsey's interest in sports writing is no accident. He's an avid runner and swimmer, ranked nationally in his age group. He's recently been named the Air University nominee for the National Fitness Award and teaches an elective fitness elective at ACSC.
The setting for Ramsey's next project is slated to be behind the Iron Curtain. The story deals with Olympic stars in the Soviet Union. The Russian Embassy has arranged for Ramsey to co-write the book with a leading Soviet journalist who covered all the Olympic games since 1952.
"What I really like about this venture is that I'll be in a position to verify that they're telling the truth," Ramsey said. "I'll see the training centers and the athletes and can cross-check with the European and South African press who have covered the events these athletes have competed in.
"I believe the United States and Soviet Union have to find qualities they can respect in each other. I also believe the Russians are closer to the Greek ideal of athletics than we are. When a gymnast, swimmer or boxer succeeds in the Soviet Union, he's made into a role model for the entire country."
Ramsey tries to make his subjects come alive in his work, from the George Foremans to the Eric Liddelels.
"Practically everything I write is centered around a major character, someone who has done something. I try to focus on what makes that person special."