About the Author

Ritchey Marbury joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with his wife, Fonda, on September 4, 1969. Charlie Sellers, Ritchey's college classmate, gave Ritchey a copy of the Book of Mormon in 1961. They were both graduate students at Georgia Tech studying city planning. Ritchey read the book in two days, studied the Church for eight years, and was baptized with his wife. Their conversion story is found in Volume 2 of Hartman and Connie Rector's book No More Strangers. Since joining, their love of Jesus Christ and the Church has grown stronger every day. Ritchey has served as branch president, bishop, stake president, mission president, and other callings. Fonda has served as mission president's companion, counselor in young women's presidency, ward organist, pianist in both primary and relief society, and other responsibilities. Ritchey says his favorite calling was den dad while his son was a cub scout and his wife was den mother. Ritchey currently serves as the ward high priest group leader and also as a Church Service Missionary Photographer. Fonda serves as ward organist and also with Ritchey as a Church Service Missionary, primarily tagging photographs. In 1949, at the age of eleven, Ritchey began his professional career as a land surveyor and civil engineer, working on a survey crew with his dad. After serving two years with the US Army Corps of Engineers, he returned home to obtain professional registrations as a land surveyor in 1965 and as a professional engineer in 1966. At age seventy-eight, he still works full time in these professions and plans to slow down to a forty-hour work week at age one hundred. He and Fonda plan never to slow down, however, in serving Jesus Christ and His church.