Page 60 - South Mississippi Living - November, 2025

A Real World Tragedy to Triumph Story Written by Shaggy’s Founder, Ron Ladner
Shaggy’s Cheeseburgers... might be the best book you read this year.
–Tom Ward
Opening the attractive cover of Shaggy’s Cheeseburgers: A Real World Tragedy to Triumph Story, you might wonder whether it is really a book about an American success story or if it focuses on the adversity. Or maybe it is a book of lessons for business success
by a seafood restaurant serving over a million people each year.
The one-word answer is yes, meaning that it is an eloquent combo of all three
and much more. But this is not your average book, mainly because there is nothing average about Shaggy’s or its founder.
The first thing you might notice is that Ron Ladner is the type of storyteller the South is famous for producing. You’ll find yourself experiencing the well-written journey with the author, growing up in small-town Mississippi, joining the same
fraternity as his hero, Jimmy Buffett, and pursuing the girl of his dreams with reckless abandon, even before meeting her in person. You’ll join Ladner on a
fateful deep-sea fishing trip and meet the fishing guide who will later become his close friend and Shaggy’s partner.
You’ll also find yourself sitting in the back yard with his childhood family, and many of their neighborhood’s
families, looking into the sky and watching for an alien
invasion. Sadly, you’ll sit helplessly with Ladner and others,
several miles northward of his home, waiting with friends as the devastating Hurricane Katrina crushes both his hometown of Long Beach and his adopted hometown of Pass Christian.
You’ll see the demolition of
communities by the largest storm
surge in American history. You’ll
discover piles of rubble, and
sometimes nothing at all, where
schools, churches, shops, and homes
once stood. But then you’ll see the
other side, the side that restores your
faith in people. You’ll see humans
devoting their time and resources
to help each other, to take the first
small steps toward rebuilding their lives. You’ll chuckle as six-packs of beer are used as money in this temporarily-primitive civilization.
60 | November 2025
www.smliving.net | SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living
RON LADNER ON HIS SPORTFISHING BOAT, THE CHEESEBURGER.