Giles, Ronald E., SFC

Acting and Singing.  Is an active member of the SAG-AFTRA and Actors Equity Association.  Started acting career in 1968, playing mostly character roles in OOB, Regional, Stock, Community & College theater productions.  He studied with William Hickey, Alice Spivak and Kathryn Sergava at the famed Herbert Berghof Studio in New York City, from 1968 to 1969.  He temporarily retired from acting in 1988, however, now he has resumed that career and has added singing to his repotoire as a full-time career.   In his spare time, Ronnie works as a volunteer Tour Guide at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Holmdell, NJ, and is in a wonderful relationship with his childhood sweetheart, Caroline.  To keep himself "grounded in reality," he still hangs out with many of his same friends he's had since his childhood.

Ronnie is the son of blue collar parents Henry Eaton Giles and Dolores (Arguello) Giles.  He was the third of five children with an ethnic heritage of English-Irish, Native American, Mexican and Eastern Europen.  He was raised in Lodi, NJ, from where he graduated High School in 1965.  After graduating, Vietnam was starting to heat up, but, being only 17, he figured that he wouldn't be drafted for at least a year or two. That is not what turned out though.  Instead, Ronnie got in a little trouble, the kind that, at the time, gave you a choice of either the Army or Jail time.  He says that was a no-brainer.  So, into the army he went. Compared to the road he was going down, he says joining the Army probably saved his life!  Of course, he didn't know that within months of his joining, he would face death at least five times that he can remember.  He became an Infantryman, serving in Vietnam as an Armored Personnel Carrier Driver, Ammo/Radioman, & Tunnel Rat with A Troop, 3/4 Cavalry, 25th Infantry Division.  Was discharged in 1968, however, Re-enlisted in 1988 and served alternately with the New Jersey and Idaho National Guard.  In 1996, he transferred to the full-time Army Reservebased out of Staten Island, New York.  For the next ten years, he worked in a wide vaiety of assignments, including Human Resorces Administration, Defense Finance and Accounting Service, Transportaion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse and Equal Opportunity.  Post 9/11 he simultaniously worked in assignments with local, state and federal Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Agency in Washington, DC, and attained the rank of Sergeant First Class/E-7.  After an Army career spanning some four decades, he retired from the military having reached his mandatory retirement age of 60 on November 13, 2007.