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the Lucases now make their home in Harriman,
tennessee. they are active in their local
american Legion and enjoy travelling together.

both feel that they have inally found their true
love in the other.

woman’s point of view.” her second is

a children’s book, How the Cactus Got
Its Thorns. (She comes by her love of

words honestly: her uncle was William
W. Johnstone, the prolific western

novelist who died in Knoxville in
2004.) She was briefly married again to

Michael Thompson, but they divorced
after two years of marriage.

In 2001, Ronne moved to Estill
Springs, Tennessee, to care for her

Lebanon, Tennessee, where James was nent threat that was always looming elder sister, delores Morgan, who was
a petroleum engineer for Texas Eastern over you.”
ill with breast cancer that had spread

gas Company. While Ronne was at After a year, with a promotion to Sp- to her liver, bones, and brain. When
Lebanon high, her father got kidney 4, she was sent to fort Sill, oklahoma. delores died in 2003, Ronne moved to

cancer, and the cost of his treatment had She married her unit supervisor, Robert Knoxville to be near her younger sister,
used up the money they had set aside Morris, got pregnant and—by the rules Joellen Johnstone Smith.

for college. “When I turned 18 I got a of the time—had to leave the Army.
After her time in the VA hospital,
draft notice, because my name is Ronne, Morris, who had also left the Army, Ronne met a woman whose mother

which sounds like a male. I went down was not happy about becoming a father. had passed away and who needed help
to the draft board and told them, ‘I will “he gave me an ultimatum: ‘It’s me or taking care of all her mother’s affairs

fail the physical.’ They said, ‘We have a the baby,’” says Ronne. She chose her in Rockwood. That job didn’t work out,
women’s army, you know.’ I told them I son Robert Lee Morris II, and Robert
but Ronne did take a job at the Cracker

intended to go to college and teach. but I left her. “It’s the best decision I ever barrel, where she re-connected with
I realized that the Army would pay my made,” she says. (Robert II is now a su- benny in 2005. “he is my true love,”

college tuition,” she recalls.
pervisor with fedEx in oklahoma City.)
she says.
She told her parents that she wanted A single mom, Ronne enrolled in El
THE ARMY LiFE
to join. “My dad thought it was great. Centro College in dallas, Texas, and got
My mom didn’t like the reputation her associate’s degree in English in 1977. of his Army career, benny says, “I

that the women’s army corps had. I She taught for 10 years in Pasadena, loved it. I was a professional. I miss it.
said, ‘Mom, I’m going.’ She reluctantly Texas, then she moved to Austin and I miss the comradeship, the being on

agreed to let me go.”
worked as a ticket agent for greyhound the move all the time, the travel. If you
She did her basic training at fort bus Lines while she pursued her bach- don’t like the job, just stick around a

McClellan in Alabama and served at elor’s degree in English at the univer- while, and you’ll be moved.”
fort Eustis, Virginia, then in Vietnam, sity of Texas. There she met a special Ronne agrees. “I wish I could have

where she was an Sp-3 transportation education teacher named Paul dowling. stayed in for 20 years,” she says. “There
movement specialist at Saigon airport. When he got a job offer in Los Ange- was so much opportunity for advance-

“I read maps, fixed up airline tickets, les, she taught for 13 years in glendale, ment, travel, and I could have received
train tickets, manifests, and orders. California. In 1998, Ronne and dowling my education while I was in there. The

When men flew in, I would transport divorced after 20 years of marriage.
opportunities they had for you were
them to their duty stations, or if they’d She also took courses at uCLA boundless, especially for a woman in

be coming out, I’d arrange for their toward her master’s degree, which she the ‘70s.”
orders to go home.
received in 2001. She has since pub-

“I grew up really fast. I’d grown up lished two books. The first is a novel, Brooks Clark is a Knoxville freelancer who wrote his
in a small town, and when I got over Escape to Nam. “A military romance,” irst Cityview story, in November 2002, on the true

there, there was the chaos and immi-
she says. “It’s a look at Vietnam from a
story behind the song and movie Thunder Road.

76 cityviewmag.com maRcH aPRiL 2014