Macon Water Authority CEO Shipman remembered for steady leadership after sudden death

Macon Water Authority CEO Ron Shipman died suddenly Friday, a little more than 24 hours after the board adjourned its monthly meeting. 

Shipman, 65, died in Thomson, where he had a second home. 

“We just are sad and hurt at Ron’s passing,” MWA Board Chair Gary Bechtel said.

Shipman was in a Walmart early evening Friday, shopping for snacks with plans to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday before heading back to Macon, when he had a pulmonary embolism, Bechtel said. 

“They revived him and he wanted to drive home,” Bechtel said. “But the ambulance started him toward the hospital and that’s when he had another [medical] event and that’s what killed him.”  

Bechtel said Shipman, who was also a pilot, had a physical exam earlier in the week and had “said everything was great.”

Bechtel credited Shipman with getting MWA in better shape organizationally. 

“Ron had done a lot of work to try to get the administrative and budget side in a great order,” he said. 

On Monday, MWA announced Michel Wanna, the authority’s assistant executive director and vice president of field and plant operations, would take the helm as interim CEO.

“Ron was very organized and he had already begun working on succession planning, so it was already laid in place that Michel would assume this role if for some reason he left or passed. And unfortunately it was the latter,” Bechtel said. 

Shipman helped usher some of Macon’s most powerful institutions through uncertain times before he was hired as the CEO of MWA. 

In 2020, he retired as vice president of Georgia Power’s Southwest Region, according to his biography on MWA’s website.

Two years later, following his brief appointment as interim CEO of MWA, Shipman was hired on permanently to fill the vacancy left by previous CEO Tony Rojas. He served a stint as interim CEO and president of the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce before Jessica Walden took the helm of the nonprofit in 2022.

Shipman was the current chair of the Macon-Bibb County Hospital Authority Board and also served on the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority as well as various nonprofit and civic boards.

A private funeral service is set for Wednesday in Thomson.