My Friend, Ron

© Buddies in the Saddle

Last night, I went to bed with a heavy heart, for I learnt that my friend, Ron Scheer, had passed away following illness. Like many of my blog friends, I dreaded the news even though I knew it would be inevitable one day. 

Can someone whom you never met in real life be your friend? Ron Scheer proved that you can in more than one way.

I met Ron through our blogs and especially his, Buddies in the Saddle, where he delighted readers with penetrating reviews of western novels and films, and interviews with some of America’s finest western authors. There was a perceptive depth to all of his writing. His blog was a definitive work on western fiction and film, and will be relevant for all time.

Following his illness, last year, Ron took to a new kind of writing: he started a Sunday journal where he wrote bravely and candidly about his thoughts on life and death, his personal beliefs, on philosophy, and such light-hearted matters as his cooking of chicken soup. They were good for our soul. Reading his journal you wouldn’t know he was ailing. His posts were positive and inspiring and laced with humour. I looked forward to reading his diary every weekend often forgetting the context he wrote in.

As Patti Abbott observed, “His journal from the last year touched me every week. He turned his death into poetry as few people can. Never maudlin, always brave and honest it was a model for all of us.”

Ron, who was an authority on frontier fiction as he liked to call western fiction, was a blogger with a big heart. He first visited my blog in January 2012 and didn't stop until a couple of months ago. He was both supportive and appreciative of my posts and left behind generous comments. I particularly looked forward to his feedback on my reviews of western novels which, henceforth, will miss hearing his authoritative voice.

Like many among us, I’ll miss Ron very much and I’ll cherish our virtual friendship, which was more real than a real one.

I offer my deepest sympathies to his wife, Lynda, and their children.


Tributes to Ron from our common friends

Patti Abbott — Pattinase 
David Cranmer — The Education of a Pulp Writer
Charles Gramlich — Razored Zen
Richard Wheeler — Wheeler's World
Elisabeth Grace Foley — The Second Sentence
Brian Busby — The Dusty Bookcase