R.I.P. Ron Scheer

On the morning that we were due to set out on our brief holiday to Segovia and Salamanca (April 13), I learned of the sad demise the day before of Ron Scheer, fellow writer.  

My belated condolences to his wife and family.

I knew Ron through social media and followed his blog Buddies in the Saddle (http://buddiesinthesaddle.blogspot.com

 

I was honoured to be one of his ‘virtual’ friends; I’m only sorry we were unable to meet in person.

He was a great enthusiast for the Old West, in print and movies, and encouraged other writers with sage advice. As he says modestly in his blog profile, he was farm-raised in the Platte River valley of central Nebraska, but eventually settled in Southern California’s Coachella Valley.

 

He fought his brain tumour and the subsequent fallout from surgery and medication with valiant good humour.

It’s said that people lose their battle with cancer; I don’t think that’s strictly true. For the cancer it’s a pyrrhic victory at best, because those deadly seeds die with the host – yet the host’s spirit lives on. Ron Scheer lives on.

Ron was a gentleman and will be sorely missed by many. (Facebook tributes can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/ron.scheer.92?fref=ts

He has left a lasting legacy with his two ‘scholarly and meticulous’ volumes:

How the West Was Written Vol 1: 1880-1906

 

How the West Was Written Vol 1: 1907-1915

 

Amazon com – paperback (also Kindle)

http://www.amazon.com/How-West-Was-Written-1880-1906/dp/099120395X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429533829&sr=1-1&keywords=How+the+west+was+written

http://www.amazon.com/How-West-Was-Written-1907-1915/dp/0990591697/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y

Amazon UK – paperback (also Kindle)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-West-Was-Written-1880-1906/dp/099120395X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429533981&sr=1-2&keywords=how+the+west+was+written

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-West-Was-Written-1907-1915/dp/0990591697/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429534015&sr=1-1&keywords=how+the+west+was+written

From the blurb: A reading of frontier fiction from that period, however, soon reveals that the cowboy western was only one of many different kinds of stories being set in the West. Besides novels about ranching and the cattle industry, writers wrote stories about railroads, mining, timber, the military, politics, women’s rights, temperance, law enforcement, engineering projects, homesteaders, detectives, preachers and, of course, Indians… tell a story of how the western frontier fed the imagination of writers, both men and women. It illustrates how the cowboy is only one small figure in a much larger fictional landscape.

 

 

Adios, amigo.