Ronda Rich

Syndicated Columnist

(Sitting in for Ronda is her primetime Emmy-award winning husband, John Tinker.)

Whenever I’m at Ronda’s Mama’s house, I spend a little time in Ronda’s childhood bedroom where she lived until after attending college, as a day student, while earning tuition money by working varied jobs from the Belk fragrance counter, an obituary writer for the daily newspaper and as a very young country music disc jockey — the make-up and fragrance counters at JC Penney and Belk; working as an obituary writer and sports reporter.

All of this, of course, informed the girl, and later the young woman, who spent so much time in this little bedroom where there are few vestiges of my wife’s youth. There are no photos on the wall but yearbooks and scrapbooks to thumb through, nothing, really — not even her old fullsize bed or tiny desk where she diligently poured over her homework, particularly reading until late night.

Oh, the stories this little room whispers.

I hear the 45’s and cherished albums Ronda played on her record player. Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn. Liquor and love, they just don’t mix/Leave a bottle or me behind/And don’t come home a-drinkin’/With lovin’ on your mind. My goodness, Ronda was singing along to that song when she was just 5 years old. It makes me wonder, standing there, how did she turn out decent the way she did?

In my mind, I hear her practicing with hairbrush in hand for the elementary talent show. I love her dearly but singing is not her strength. I close my eyes to hear her warbling, Loretta’s “The coffee’s boiling over/And the wash needs a hangin’/One wants a cookie/And one wants a changin’/And one’s on the way.”

But she did turn out well.

Perhaps helped in part by her learning, then later reciting, after church, what she’d learned in Sunday school. “‘Zacheus,’” Ronda, age 4, would retell, wagging her finger, “‘Zacheus, you come down out of that tree’, Jesus said. ‘I’m coming to your house for supper.’” It was one of her favorites.

Yep, she turned out all right.

In my opinion, anyway. In part, because she always had dreams, then applied herself to those dreams, continuing to learn the art of storytelling — not only by listening to her parents and their friends tell stories — but by listening to Zondervan Storybook records: Noah’s Ark, Repuntzel, The Three Little Pigs. She learned them by rote, talking along with the narration, then recited them by memory, soon developing her own storytelling style.

Standing there in that room, I can hear almost hear her, bickering with Elvis Presley with whom she was engaged until the age of 8. (The relationship ended amicably enough and they remained friends to the end, Ronda still often visiting Elvis’ Graceland.) Such imagination.

I hear her, talking to herself — something she does, frequently, to this day — as she packed her clothes in the small, worn coco brown suitcase, getting ready to go on an imaginary trip to New York City on what she referred to as “book business”… at just 6 years old. As I said, the little girl had dreams and, as she says, “wherever your dreams take you, you still have to pack.”

That brown leather Samsonite is so sentimental that it sets next to the English Tudor-fashioned round front door that Ronda designed for this house that she built. It, too, is based on storytelling from a black and white Humphrey Bogart movie she watched many years ago. Sometimes, when I’m upstairs, I look over the banister and see a slight smile on her face as, walking by, she glances at the suitcase.

Recently, I read a Substack article written by the New York agent, Richard Curtis, who discovered her at a NYC writer’s conference.

I’m always searching for stories on my wife. Not to my surprise, did I discover that Mr. Curtis tells the story the same she does.

“A Star Is Born,” is titled the article. And, indeed, those big dreams were born in such a little room.

Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of the new Stella Bankwell mystery series. Visit www.rondarich. com to sign up for her free weekly newsletter.