ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 31, 1996 TAG: 9610310069
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
When a friend or co-worker gets sick and can't work, most of us try to chip in. We send flowers and cards, drop off an occasional casserole, phone and visit when we can.
But the UPS deliveryman?
Yes, if his name is Ronnie English, a 21-year veteran driver for UPS.
Diagnosed with kidney failure in January, the 51-year-old has a way of bringing out the best in people.
So, when he got sick, people took notice. Lots of people.
Robert Underwood can vouch for this fact. He's the man UPS assigned to fill in for Ronnie on his 130-stop route on Brambleton Avenue.
The job duties are not unlike pinch-hitting. For Cal Ripken.
``Not a day goes by that a customer doesn't ask about him, even on the house stops,'' Underwood says. ``Normally at a house stop, you sit the box down, hit the doorbell and leave. So when people on the house stops ask about you, you know you're good.''
But friends, family, customers and co-workers have done a lot more than ask - and gush - about Ronnie English.
His sister, Marie Scott, is giving him one of her kidneys.
His co-workers at UPS have shown up at his doorstep - every other week, since January - with a fistful of checks to help cover the cost of his thrice-weekly dialysis.
Customers have sent cards full of heartfelt notes, such as this one, from a nurse at a doctor's office: ``At night and every time I see a UPS truck, I say, `Dear God, Please bless Ronnie.'''
Fellow driver Ed McCoy ``came over and cut my hair when I was too sick to sit up in a chair,'' Ronnie recalls. Once when Ronnie was in the hospital, McCoy went to his house to fix the furnace.
UPS workers Steve Smith and Roosevelt Via made speeches to raise money and led prayers at the office.
And driver Darryl Kay came up with the idea for the Oct. 5 Ronnie English Golf Tournament, which raised nearly $4,000 and attracted more than 100 golfers, most of them UPS workers.
Underwood says he had a hard time persuading Ronnie's customers to play in the Countryside tournament, which funneled half of the $45 entry fee to Ronnie's medical bills. ``Most people wanted to just write checks,'' he recalls. Some for as much as $500.
Frame 'N Things donated a $350 print for a raffle. The UPS worker who won it gave the print away - to Ronnie.
Dotti Myers, owner of Handle With Care Packaging Store on Brambleton, says people don't respond so generously to just anyone. ``Ronnie goes out of his way to be nice,'' she says. ``When my little grandchildren are here, he plays with them and lets them think they're helping him.''
Cara Perdue of Perdue Cabinets says, ``He just has this wonderful aura about him.''
Ron Montgomery, owner of Kelley's Music, has known Ronnie for 20 years. "I was a teen-ager delivering newspapers, and our routes would cross,'' Montgomery says. ``He's always been great, and everybody around here thinks so. I mean, anybody who's got something bad to say about Ronnie is a nut.''
And what does Ronnie have to say about all the attention?
He's so overwhelmed, he can hardly speak. ``It's all just so unreal unbelievable. I mean, what am I gonna do to thank these people?''
Sitting in the basement rec room of his Northwest Roanoke home, the soft-spoken man has enough get-well cards to wallpaper his house. More than two dozen checks are stacked on his coffee table. During an hour-long interview, five people call - to see how he is.
``One lady wrote a check for $300, and I don't even know who she was!'' he says. ``Here's another one right here, for $200, from Las Cruces, New Mexico. It's amazing.''
Scheduled to have his kidney transplant next week, Ronnie has kept busy writing thank-you notes to his myriad fans. In typical Ronnie fashion, he couldn't just buy a box of standard notes. He hand-selected a big, individual Hallmark for everyone, instead.
``There is just something about him - his kindness, his steadiness,'' Underwood says. ``He had a lot of bad days [physically], but his mood never changed. He earned his customers' respect a long time ago.
``No other driver would have elicited such a response.''
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Ronnie English will be receiving a kidney from hisby CNBsister, Marie Scott, on Nov. 7. color CINDY PINKSTON STAFF