More than three decades after they first met in his sixth-grade math class, Frederick T. Hone Jr. and his ex-wife Kimberly still talk.
More than three decades after they first met in his sixth-grade math class, Frederick T. Hone Jr. and his ex-wife, Kimberly, still talk.
He, from his family property in Exeter and she, from Australia, where she lives with her third husband. They connect occasionally via the internet.
"I called her last night to wish her happy birthday," Hone, 76, said in an interview last week, noting that he hadn't reached her due to the large time difference between Rhode Island and Australia.
Kimberly Ryan's birthday — more precisely her age — drew a lot of attention in Rhode Island over the years.
She was 11 when she met 41-year-old Hone, her teacher at Wickford Middle School in North Kingstown, in 1982. Six years later, Kimberly was pregnant and Hone was sentenced to 90 days in jail for disobeying a judge's order that the couple, who had since been married in Georgia, stay apart.
About a year after he got out, she accused him of domestic abuse and filed for divorce.
He lost his teaching job in North Kingstown over having a relationship with a student.
Amid the media frenzy, Hone insisted that his relationship with Kimberly was not romantic until she was 17.
After the divorce, Hone and Ryan battled for custody of their son, Bradlee, when she moved to Washington state.
But time has healed many wounds.
Hone said Bradlee now lives on Hone's Exeter estate.
Retired, Hone said he recently looked through the old newspaper clippings of his marriage and arrest to reflect on those chaotic years.
He still says he was treated unfairly by the Rhode Island legal system and wouldn't do anything differently if he had it to do over again.
"Someone had to do something; her life was going down the drain," Hone said of his decision to marry Ryan, who was living with a foster family before they were married. "I got her to get her GED and persuaded her to go to URI. She was the brightest student I ever had."
Although he became well known for his relationship with a former student, Hone has done more than teach.
He is an inventor, founder of manufacturer Pathfinder Snowplows and ran, unsuccessfully, for Exeter Town Council in 2004.
An antique car collector, Hone said he suffered a brain injury in 2013 when he fell off a car carrier, and it prevents him from working.
He still has ideas for new patents and inventions, but the injury makes it difficult to pursue them.
One of those ideas is a "new design for hamburger and hot dog rolls."
— panderson@providencejournal.com
(401) 277-7384
On Twitter: @PatrickAnderso_
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