From 1989 to 2004 Presson served as an assistant pastor in large churches in North Carolina South Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee where counseling and congregational care was a significant part of his duties. While in North Carolina, Presson had the unique privilege to work alongside with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the top selling marriage book of all-time, The Five Love Languages. Presson and Chapman’s later collaborated together on the Conversation Starter trilogy of books, a series still popular with couples and families.
Presson teamed up on another national best-seller when he was asked to create the online assessment and feedback material for the revised edition of The Love Dare.
Presson’s most popular book is “When Will My Life Not Suck? Authentic Hope for the Disillusioned”. He later co-authored the Teen Edition of the book with his son, Cameron.
Ramon & his wife, Dorrie, have been married for 34 years, and live in Thompson Station, TN. They have two adult sons, Trevor and Cameron, and they secretly love each of them the most. Dorrie with a Master’s degree in higher education and considerable experience as a professional career management coach and consultant, was the associate director of Vanderbilt University’s student career center for many years. In 2020 Dorrie joined Ramon’s counseling practice to offer coaching to couples through the framework of the Enneagram, a personality typology. They also work in tandem in offering premarital and newlywed counseling to couples.
“I’ve always been a writer. When I was in the 3rd grade I remember getting an award from the school district for a poem I wrote. I wish I still had the poem or even remember what it was about. Research indicates that almost all writers of any genre enjoyed reading when they were young. That’s certainly true of me. My favorite books were the Hardy Boys mysteries. But in the early years up through my teens, almost all my writing was journaling and poetry.
I’d been a tennis player since middle school and played on the team at Wingate University until my sophomore year when I injured my right hand playing basketball just days before the tennis season began. Up to that moment tennis was my #1 extracurricular interest and hobby, and writing came in a consistent second. In looking back, that ranking instantly and permanently flipped the moment the ER physician told me that I had broken my right hand, my racquet hand. I missed the entire season. That semester, writing moved from the background to the foreground, due in part to the instruction and encouragement from my English professor, Maurice Thomas.
Another thing that the research about the background of writers bears out is that serious writers usually had an encouraging cheerleader or a mentoring guide somewhere along the way, someone who saw and affirmed the potential in the young writer. That is true for me as well. I’ve been blessed with more than one literary Mr. Miyagi who believed in me and helped me to develop as a writer. Maurice Thomas was one.
Another has been Stellasue Lee, a poet twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, whom providence sent from California to just a few streets over from me in our Tennessee neighborhood. After decades of writing prose (articles, columns, and books) Stellasue Lee re-ignited my love of reading and writing poetry. Under her weekly tutelage my vision of what poetry could be expanded, and my craftsmanship improved. Almost all the poems in the Janice Keck Literary Award collection of my poems titled “Voice Lessons” were written during her watch.