Toomer, Ron, in full RONALD VALENTINE TOOMER (b. May 31, 1930, Pasadena, Calif., U.S.), American roller coaster designer who could be considered the sovereign of steel coasters. His work with Arrow Dynamics (founded as Arrow Development Company in 1946) brought to life such influential steel thrillers as the tubular track Runaway Mine Ride (1966), the inverted helix-shaped Corkscrew (1975), and the first suspended coasters of the 1980s.

A mechanical engineering graduate of the University of Nevada-Reno (1961, B.S.), Toomer was involved in the first U.S. satellite launches and served on the team that designed the heat shield for the Apollo spacecraft.

During his stint as a high-tech researcher for the space program, Toomer met a coworker who had previously been a welder for the Arrow Development Company. In 1965, Toomer joined the company and was hired to work on the design of the Runaway Mine Ride, the world's first all-steel coaster. Toomer's tool of choice (and necessity): the slide rule.

"A big part of the attraction of roller coasters is that people know that unlike with hang-gliding or skydiving, the train is definitely going to come back," Toomer says.

In more than 30 years in the amusement industry, the recently retired Toomer designed more than 80 steel coasters worldwide. In 1975 he built one of the first looping coasters of the modern era--the Corkscrew at Knott's Berry Farm (Buena Park, Calif.), followed the next year by one at Cedar Point (Sandusky, Ohio). Other feathers in his hard hat include Cedar Point's beloved Magnum XL-200 (1989), an out-and-back coaster that was the first to top 200 feet, and also the first suspended coasters, Big Bad Wolf (1984) at Busch Gardens, Williamsburg, Va., and Cedar Point's Iron Dragon (1987).

Toomer became president of Arrow Dynamics in 1986, at about the time that the company was developing the innovative Pipeline coaster, on which the cars execute a snap roll of 182 degrees around their longitudinal axis. Unfortunately, the highly complex project ran out of funds before it could be realized as anything more than a prototype. In the 1990s he held posts as chairman of the board and as director.

"I don't ride the things I design though," Toomer says. "I've had a bad motion sickness problem since I was a little kid. But I've ridden enough of them to know what happens and how it feels."

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