BOMAG and Linder Industrial Machinery held their second annual golf classic, Oct. 3, 2025, to benefit the Construction Angels at Legends Golf Resort in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
The event was a huge success, raising $50,000 for Construction Angels to support families of fallen construction workers.
Construction Angels is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity that provides immediate financial assistance and grief counseling to the spouse and children left behind when a construction worker involved in an accidental work-related fatality. The charity also provides scholarship opportunities to surviving children, as well as qualifying applicants.
Kristi Ronyak is CEO and founder of Construction Angels and is a third-generation member of an asphalt family business from Ohio that started in 1939.
"My family is now on the fourth generation and continues business in northeastern Ohio," she said. "I went to the World of Asphalt with my family in 2009 when I met a woman who was walking around collecting money for ‘one of our own.' When I asked her what that was, she said, a construction worker was killed and left behind a spouse and children. Of course, I donated to this family, but I wanted to continue donating to a charity that helped construction workers."
After some research, Ronyak discovered there was no charity for construction workers' families affected by work-related fatality, so after a fatality in Miami, she was asked to start one, which she did in 2011.
"It took me about a year and a half, and we finally got our 501(c)(3) and started in south Florida," she said. "Fourteen years later, we are in 33 states and growing, helping as many families as we can across the United States. I get asked all the time if something personal happened that made me start the charity, but unfortunately, my family had a fatality in 2021. Nobody is exempt from having a construction fatality, it could happen to anybody."
There are approximately 3.5 construction fatalities every day in the United States, she added.
"And the majority of families we helped out in 2024 were due to reckless drivers or people hitting our construction workers on the road. I'm a big advocate for putting cameras in our work zones to give speeding tickets to have people slow down. Hopefully, we can improve the statistics of fatalities one family at a time." CEG
