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At 21, Ron King was a U.S. embassy guard in Moscow, helping protect President Reagan during a summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The young Marine later guarded President George Herbert Walker Bush during a visit to Poland.

Now 39, the Marine Corps reservist from Dayton occasionally speaks at area high schools, where teens ask him to talk about his favorite experience.

"There is no one thing I can put my finger on," he said.

While the military life has allowed the 1985 Patterson Co-Op High School graduate to travel around the world to places such as Africa and Europe, it also has taken him away to war three times.

King, who was an active duty Marine for four years before joining the Marine Corps Reserve in 1994, feels a strong sense of duty and believes the hardest part of pulling multiple tours in Iraq has been the impact on his family.

Amy, his wife of 10 years, said it has gotten a bit easier each time, but is still tough. The stress of her husband's first deployment to Iraq in spring 2003 toward the end of the U.S. invasion took a physical toll on her.

"I lost so much weight," said Amy, who dropped to under 100 pounds.

While he received orders to go the first time, it was his choice to go back the last two times — a decision he said he made only after his wife agreed.

"It's like my gift," she said. " I'm not doing anything to help the world, or whatever. And he can. I mean, who am I to hold him back from doing what he feels he really needs to do?"

So in 2004, he was back in Iraq while his Military Police Company C was stationed near the Syrian border helping train Iraqi police.

This last time, they did convoy security and worked in border checkpoints on the Jordanian border.

King said it was difficult because he worried about the strain of being away from Jan. 1 through Oct. 14, 2006, would have on his family.

Amy was in charge of running the entire household and addressing unforeseen issues that popped up.

Thankfully, her mother — whom she described as a "handyman" — lives down the street.

"She does everything," Amy said. "I couldn't have gotten through it without my mom."

On his down time, King's thoughts would always return to Ohio and his wife, daughters Chelsea Davidson and Abigail "Abi" Warrell-King, and son Iain Warrell-King.

Abi, 12, a seventh-grader at Sacred Heart of Jesus School in Fairfield, and two friends were busy organizing a school project called Operation Compassion that involved collecting and sending care packages filled with everyday items and more than 500 greeting cards to deployed troops in Iraq.

"It actually made me feel better," said Abi, who writes for Scholastic News and wrote about Operation Compassion in this month's issue.

"The boxes began to fill with shaving cream, phone cards, sunscreen, shower puffs, and nonperishable foods," she wrote. "Each week, we took the overflowing boxes and the cans and sorted everything into categories. We then boxed up individual packages, using the money we had collected to pay for the postage to Iraq."

Her father is still moved by the sentiment behind the ambitious effort.

"To receive something like that, it benefits the whole unit," he said. "It also helps the new guys, the guys who never deployed before."

Last Sunday, Abi, Chelsea and Iain tagged along with their father to help him load boxes of donated toys to be distributed through Toys for Tots.

Iain, 14, said having his dad home is the best Christmas gift of all.

But is he home for good?

"I think this is it," King said during an interview at his home with Amy.

Knowing his strong desire to serve, she has her doubts.

"He still has a little bit in him," she said.

Contact the reporter at (937) 225-2094 or mkissell@DaytonDailyNews.com.

> Learn how you can send holiday greetings to our troops overseas