WITH the nation set to fall silent to remember our war dead this Sunday (November 10), one of Taunton’s staunchest supporters of the military has told how she lost all memory of her time serving Queen and country.
At her lowest ebb, Ronnie Roach had an epiphany that turned her life around, converting a metaphorical empty glass into one that is overflowing.
Ronnie was born in Plymouth and moved to Bristol as an infant.
After school, she joined the women’s RAF because she “wanted something different”.
She underwent training at RAF Spitalgate, in Lincolnshire, before training in communications at RAF Cosford.
She was then based at RAF Mountbatten, Plymouth, and was seconded to RAF High Wycombe as a telephonist.
While in High Wycombe, Ronnie, who became a senior aircraft woman, met a boy in a disco and the couple married.
“I had to work nights and he said, ‘I’m not having my wife doing nights. I want my dinner on the table when I come home’.
“So, I left the RAF. It was a career I’d have loved, but you can only kick yourself so many times.”
The couple split up and Ronnie returned to Bristol, where she worked for Wessex Water.
She said: “In Bristol, I met some girls in a disco. They were from Taunton and they invited me down one weekend.
”I thought I could do with a change and rented a flat in Cheddon Road while working for ITT (Standard Telephones).”
She wed a second time, although that marriage also broke down.
After giving up work to bring up her sons, Ronnie later took a job in a home for profoundly deaf children.
She later worked with people with autism and was seriously assaulted.
She added: “When I came round in hospital, I had amnesia and ended up having a breakdown, so I had to replan my life.
“I cannot remember anything before that date - June 12, 2008.
“There’s my old life and my new life. It’s a heartache not remembering my children when they were little.
“Photos sometimes trigger something, but I have been told of my past and had to write it down and learn it.”
Three years into her recovery, Ronnie told herself: “‘I can’t live like this’.
“It had got so bad I never left the house alone. I was afraid I would get lost and be unable to find my way home.
“I saw a photo of my graduation but couldn’t remember anything about it.
“I just woke up one day and felt this inner strength.
“I needed to change the way I looked at things. I flipped it on its head. I told myself, ‘I’ve lost my past, now concentrate on my future’.
“I’d always been positive and forward thinking and that was still in me.”
Ronnie is totally committed to the military community and carries out the administration for the Taunton branch of the Armed Forces Veterans Breakfast Club, organising monthly get togethers for “breakfast and military banter”.
“If one of them doesn’t turn up, I’m onto them to check they’re OK,” she said.
“Remembrance Sunday means a lot to me.
“I’ll be at the service at St Mary’s (Taunton Minster) and at the Cenotaph afterwards.
“I’ll be wearing my poppy with pride. It brings tears to my eyes every time.
“Each year I see the men in wheelchairs with blankets over their legs and every year there’s one less.”
Ronnie hit the international headlines in 2014 when she protested to the then manager of Morrisons in Taunton when an 89-year-old veteran was left to sell poppies outside in the “freezing cold”. The company later apologised.
“It was so wrong. And I’d do it again,” she said.
Ronnie, who has six grandchildren, keeps busy as vice-chairman of the Victoria Park Action Group and as a member of the Early Birds and Taunton Divas WI groups.
“And I love being a grandma,” she added.
“I’m perfectly healthy apart from having arthritis.
“Life’s been good though and my house has been adapted for me with a stair lift.
“And thanks to the RAF Benevolent Fund, I’ve got a mobility scooter - Ronnie 1 - which allows me to remain independent.”
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