Ronald R. Kimzey was born in Pleasanton, Linn County, Kansas, in 1946. His family moved to Topeka, Shawnee County when he was in 6th grade, and he graduated from Topeka High School. He earned both his BS in Business Administration (1968) and JD (1971) from the University of Kansas. He was part of the ROTC in college and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army when graduating in 1968.

From 1971-1972 Kimzey was an assistant attorney wih the Douglas County Attorney's Office in Kansas. He was briefly called to active duty in March 1972, but after three months the Army offered to take him off active duty for two years. Kimzey therefore found a job as an associate with Fisher and Phillips in Atlanta, Georgia, a practice focused exclusively on labor and employment, representing management.

Kimzey became a partner with Fisher and Phillips in 1976. In 1978 he left with several other lawyers to form their own labor and employment law firm, Ford Harrison LLP. Ford Harrison grew over the course of Kimzey's career until his retirement in 2012.

Kimzey's career focused on traditional labor law, including representation, collective bargaining, arbitration, and strikes, as well as employment litigation. He represented employers in a variety of industries over the years but eventually focused mostly on the health care industry and in particular the private hospital industry. One of his largest clients was HCA.

[Information retrieved from narrator biographical information form with collection materials.]