Ronald James Vauk

Lieutenant Commander, United States Naval Reserve, watch commander in the Naval Command Center. He was on the second day of his annual reserve duty.

He was the youngest of nine children, born at Nampa, and went to the Naval Academy from Nampa High School, graduating in 1987 with a degree in political science. After nuclear power school he served aboard the submarines Glenard P. Lipscomb and Oklahoma City, and left active duty for the reserve in 1993.

He worked as a project manager and then in the submarine technology department of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, took a master's in business at Maryland in 1999, and rose quickly to assistant group supervisor.

He married Jennifer Mooney, whom he had met at the Academy, in August 1987. Their son Liam was born in 1997. Their daughter Meaghan was born on the seventh of November 2001, two months after he was killed.

He took his family back to Idaho at least once a year, and was at his wife's family's table in Baltimore most Sundays. Just before this duty he had been at the beach at Fenwick Island with them all, taking his son into the sand and onto the rides, and got in one round of golf.

He worked wood. He had just finished the basement of the house at Mount Airy - a family room and a bedroom with large cupboards and a bath - and everyone who saw it said how warm he had made it.

His wife Jennifer, his son Liam, his daughter Meaghan, his parents Dorothy and Hubert, and his eight brothers and sisters.