Rodwell Ronald William

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Biografie:
gestorben in Norfolk (Großbritannien)

Ronald William Rodwell 1902 - 1982
It is many years since I last saw Ronald Rodwell, but during the 1930s we did a lot of climbing together in this country, in the Alps and elsewhere. After his marriage in 1942 he gave up mountaineering and confined his outdoor activities to golf and tennis and we gradually lost touch and I am indebted to one of his former partners for the next three paragraphs.
He died in Norfolk on 14 March 1982 having spent most of his working life in the accountancy profession. After qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1927, he became a partner in Wykes and Co. of Leicester. He was senior partner from 1942 and after the firm's amalgamation with Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co. in 1954, continued as senior local partner until his retirement in 1967.
He spent the early part of the 1939-45 War in the Army, having been commissioned in the Territorials not long before war broke out but, following the deaths in quick succession of 2 partners in Wykes and Co., he was released to head the firm's practice.
Conservative in outlook and courteous in manner he represented the archetypal family practitioner and was greatly trusted and respected. For many years he served as treasurer of Leicester University and was a director of Leicester Permanent Building Society. Outside his very full business life his main interest was in his home and family and he is survived by a son, 2 daughters and 6 grandchildren, his wife having predeceased him.
Ronald was a great lover of the mountains and a competent, if somewhat cautious, climber and usually joined the small parties which we made up about once a month for North Wales, staying at the then Milestone Cottage (now Glan Dena, the Midland Association of Mountaineers' Hut) and he must have been on almost all the standard routes opened up at that time, although we only occasionally ventured on a 'severe' .
He also regularly turned up at meets of other clubs in Wales, the Lakes and Scotland and I remember one Christmas Eve of iron-hard frost when he and I climbed the great corrie on the face of Ben Lui, reaching the top at sunset after a whole afternoon's step cutting and narrowly escaping a night out.
At the time he joined the Club in 1936 his membership application shows a well distributed selection of first class peaks and passes in Switzerland, mostly with guides, and a number of guideless expeditions in Austria and the Tarantaise. On many of these I was with him but we did not have another season together in the Alps and I cannot recollect his subsequent climbs there.
However, in 1938, during one of our Welsh week-ends, Rodwell, who had spent most of the evening poring over an atlas, announced that he had found in Swedish Lapland a peak with a name of 22 letters and proposed to climb it. Two of us agreed to join him and that autumn we made a mini-expedition of it, camping for some weeks out on the Tundra. Lapland was little known then to British mountaineers and we were captivated by that remote and beautiful area to which, indeed, I have since returned, many times. Our visit most interestingly coincided with one of the 11 yearly migrations of the lemmings and we achieved a number of peaks and glacier passes, including our objective KATOKJOKOTJKASKATJAKKO which proved to be easy but of dangerously rotten rock. Recorded as first climbed by Axel Hamburg in 1911, his card was the only one we found in a mouldering tin on the top.
I have always been grateful to Ronald for introducing me to Lapland and wish that I could have had his companionship again after the war. He was a kind and gentle person.
A. A. Galloway
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 88, 1983, Seite 275-276


Geboren am:
1902
Gestorben am:
14.03.1982