[Rails] Any way to use a radio button attached to record id during a create

I'm doing a list of family members, each with a radio button for head
of household. After the household record and the records for each
person are created, it is easy to set the hoh field to the person
wanted. The problem comes if I try to set this field before the
create. Then the field is 0, and this isn't updated after the record
is created. Any way to fix this? By the way, I'm using rails 2.3.9
until I have these problems worked out to get a clean app to upgrade..

Thanks

Bob <bsm2th@gmail.com>