Ron was a decent, honest gentleman and quite a quiet man whose life began in Tottenham in North London where he was born on the 11^th of February 1937. He was the eldest of two sons for his parents, Maud and Fred and he was brought up in a close-knit community in Summerhill Road. His early childhood years were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, and Ron remembered all the front windows of the hoses being blown out when a rocket landed nearby.

He became one of the many thousands of British city children to be separated from their families and evacuated to safer places around the country that were not subjected to German bombing. Ron’s experience as an evacuee was a very positive one: he went up to Altrincham where he and another boy from Tottenham were taken in by the Smith family with their three sons. Like a lot of people during the war, the family was not well off but what they had was shared out. Everybody got on famously together and a cross word was never used. Mr Smith used to make model ships, planes and railway engines from scrap metal; the boys, including Ron, would spend hours playing with them, and Ron particularly remembered a model of a battleship that had all working parts. That childhood time in Altrincham was the start of a lifelong friendship between the Smith family and Ron’s own family. They kept in touch after the war and, when Mr Smith’s work brought him to London, he would stay with Ron’s family and they would go to see all the new films together.

Ron had many childhood memories from after the war: trips to Southend, travelling there in a flat-back lorry, sitting in the back with chairs to sit on; playing knock-down ginger, miniature cricket and roller hockey; doing a milk round, getting up at 6am before going to school afterwards.

Also after the war, came the arrival of Ron’s younger brother, Geoff. The two of the, and their cousins, Norma and Shirley, were close, and Shirley has very fond memories of Ron from those days: 

• Playing endless street games like cowboys and Indians (where Ron always made the girls be the Indians).
• Going off for a day in the park with Ron, as the eldest, in charge.  Even though he must have resented always having to have the younger ones tagging along, he never made too much fuss about it.
• All going to Saturday morning pictures for kids.
• Ron passing the 11plus and going to Tottenham Grammar School
• Ron getting a weekend job selling penny ice lollies out of an ice box on the front of a pedal bike.  The others would all try and beg a lolly from him but he was not having any of that.
• Ron playing truant from school for many months when he was 15 and covering it up by hiding his satchel in his cousins’ house and then going off for the day.
• Ron’s mum finding out when she got a letter saying he had been expelled.  She sent him out of the house and told him not to come back until he had a job.
• Ron went out and returned having got a job on the railway which led to him becoming the youngest firemen at the time on the steam trains out of Kings Cross.

 That would have been hard, physical work, shovelling the coal to power the locomotives. Then, like most young men of his generation, Ron was called up for National Service and he served in the Army in Aden before he was posted nearer to home to help his Mum after his Dad passed away. After completing his service, he went on to work in a number of night clubs in London’s West End before becoming a controller in a minicab office.

 It was through that job that he met his future wife, Doreen, when she used to get a taxi. They began going out together, one thing led to another, and their wedding took place on the 3^rd of February 1973 at the register office in Wood Green. As well as gaining a wife, Ron also gained Doreen’s two sons, Michael and Paul, and he was best man at Michael’s wedding the following year.  After Michael married, his bedroom was turned into a dining room and bar known as “The Rondo Room”, many a night was spent there with friends and family including special nights after Spurs cup victories.  Later, came the arrival of grandchildren: Joanne, Stephen, Laura and David. Ron loved the grandkids, especially when they were young, and there are lots of happy memories from those days.

 After ten years of marriage, Ron and Doreen settled in Barking in East London, with Ron working as a Dispatch Manager at the Bass Charrington brewery, in nearby Silvertown, until he retired in the late 1990s.

 In his spare time, Ron was a keen fisherman – he loved nothing better than sitting by a river, relaxing. In his earlier years it would be the River Lea in North London but, after moving here to Peterborough, he spent his time relaxing on the banks of the River Nene. Ron and Doreen shared many happy times together: for their 25^th wedding anniversary in 1998 they renewed their vows at a ceremony in the Bahamas, and they also enjoyed numerous trips to the USA, and around most of Europe, before Doreen sadly passed away in 2006. 

 It should be mentioned that when Ron’s cousin, Shirley, got married it was Ron who walked Shirley down the aisle, being the only man left in her immediate family. Later he was proud to become Godfather to her daughter, Penny. Mention must also be made of Ron’s liking for a smoke; he would always roll his own and he also liked a drop of scotch, although he rarely drank in his later years.