Hello, Donna!
By Jason Vondersmith
Issue date: Tue, May 18, 2004
The Tribune
Ron Ross is busy becoming a woman and will remain a Winter Hawk fan; he just didn’t want his transition to divert focus from the team.
Long before people knew him as the Portland Winter Hawk color commentator or the trusty KBPS radio man or the Benson High teacher and softball coach or the married father of two, Ron Ross had a recurring dream.
He was about 12 years old, way too young to make sense of it, way too young to be overwhelmed by it. “I used to dream I had the nose of Elizabeth Montgomery,” he says, speaking of the “Bewitched” star who could make magical things happen, “and I could go ‘blinky-blinky’ … and I’m a girl.”
One day in January 2001, Ross woke up at 5:30 a.m. He put on a dress, and “I wanted to go to work that way. I had never experienced that before.”
Three months later, Donna Amelia Ross emerged. He went to dinner in Portland dressed as her, “scared to death,” especially when he heard police sirens as he returned to the hotel room he had rented to change back into Ron. “I’m sitting there saying, ‘They don’t arrest us anymore!’ ” he says. “Thankfully, they passed me.”
At a May 2001 retreat called Esprit Gala in Port Angeles, Wash., Ross spent four days going to dinners, outings and classes dressed as Donna. He even posed for glamour photos.
“From that time on, I knew in my heart, for sure, that I needed to be on that course,” he says. “Living a dual life was not possible.”
On July 10, Ron Ross will begin spending a year as Donna, as required by psychiatrists and doctors before he can have surgery to make the permanent, surgical transition from man to woman.
Ross, 50, can hardly wait.
“Peace,” he says.
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