My cousin Ron Abney spent more than a decade raising money stateside to support an orphanage in Cambodia that he encountered during one of his many trips there as part of his work with the International Republican Institute. Believe me–he lived a fascinating life and was an absolutely incredible human being.
Ron was raised in a very small town in Middle Georgia where, during his high school years, he played on the state championship basketball team. Later, Ron studied journalism at the University of Georgia and then worked on NY Governor Nelson D. Rockefeller’s staff in Albany, serving as front man for many of Rockefeller’s trips around the world. Later, he moved to NYC and served on the Battery Park Project, which developed the lower tip of Manhattan. Throughout this career, Ron met almost everyone who was anyone in politics in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
When he left his career as a civil servant of the State of NY, Ron became involved in the Republican National Institute, an organization that trains the populace of third-world countries in how to conduct democratic elections. He spent time in some of the hotbeds of political controversy–East Timor, Uganda, and Cambodia, to name a few. (There’s another interesting story you could write about him–he was the only American present at a political rally in Cambodia, where he was almost killed by shrapnel from a explosion linked to thugs hired by the opposition.)
While in Cambodia, Ron visited an orphanage, and that orphanage became his life’s mission. The little children who lived there when he first got involved have now grown up, and some have gone to university and become productive citizens in their homeland, all supported by funds that Ron and his team of friends and family raised over the years. Despite his age and bouts of bad health, Ron tried to return to Cambodia at least once a year to check on the orphanage, bring supplies and visit with the kids, who all called him “Daddy.”
When Ron retired from the IRI, he returned to his hometown of Cochran. From there, he continued to spread the word about “his” orphanage and raise funds until his untimely death in 2011. His daughter Lee Darter has now picked up the reins, establishing the Ron Abney Educational Fund in 2013 to help carry on her father’s work throughout the years ahead.
–Kathy Higginbotham, Ron’s first cousin & Secretary for RAEF
Please read more about Ron Abney at
Temple News
“Abney was a political consultant, a graying foot soldier in the army of U.S.-funded advisers that fanned out to the former Soviet satellites in the 1990s to help recast them as multi-party democracies. He had been working in Cambodia as director of operations for the International Republican Institute. Now he lay in Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore, looking at the grenade fragment that had been dug out of his left buttock. It was the size of a marble, but jagged.”
–from A Tragedy of No Importance by Rich Garella and Eric Pape
Joel Brinkley, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his work covering Cambodian refugees and the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in 1979, has written a book titled Cambodia’s Curse. In this book Ron Abney is quoted numerous times and also speaks about the grenade attack in 1997 during which he was severely injured by shrapnel. Sadly, Ron passed away before the book was released, but he would have been happy to know that the story of the Cambodian people’s struggles is still being put forward.
Cambodia’s Curse is available through Amazon
REMEMBERING RON ABNEY
This moving one-minute trailer chronicles the placement of Ron’s ashes in a stupa on the grounds of the Takeo Orphanage and the accompanying Buddhist funeral ceremony.
Sandy Swindal, Ron’s first cousin and treasurer for the Ron Abney Educational Fund, visited Takeo Orphanage on December 31, 2014, and fulfilled Ron’s wish that his ashes be interred at the orphanage. The ceremony took place exactly three years after his passing on December 31, 2011.
One of the Takeo orphans whom Ron Abney helped to attend college wrote the following letter to Ron’s daughter, Lee Darter, after she learned of Ron’s passing:
“My name is Sreynuon Ngy. I am a parent less who lived in Takeo Orphanage before. By getting dad Ron support I can finish my study at University, now i work at bank and i tell myself that if dad Ron come to see us again in Cambodia i will show the Certificate to him tell him by my voice that i will not make him hopeless with what Dad done to me. I am so so sad to get this news (of his passing). I don’t think at all that dad pass away from us just a short like this from now on, how could i talk to him, he didn’t hear yet about what i wanna talk to him. I really really wanna see his face for the last time but it is impossible. Lee, I don’t know how to tell you about my feeling now but I just know that i lost my parents since i was nine years old and i don’t wanna lost any one who i love any more. He is a SUPPER DADDY in my heart. Even if, he stop living in this world but he lives in my heart forever. Lee, Please you kindly help me talk to him and sent him about my Best Regard.
Rest in peace to a wonderful teacher.
–Sreynuon Ngy, Takeo Orphanage & RAEF college student
“Ron Abney, a kindly fighter for freedom, passed away as this new year began. Ron spent many years side by side with the Cambodian democracy movement as an adviser and ally. He was wounded in the 1997 grenade attack against peaceful demonstrators in Phnom Penh, and never stopped demanding justice for those who died there. He founded Voices for Global Change and became a pillar of the Takeo Orphanage in Cambodia. And in the last three years, he served on the advisory board for our film, “Who Killed Chea Vichea?” Ron was a man who would chip away at the wall of injustice even if it were a thousand miles high. If all of us did the same, it would fall in an instant. Thank you, Ron.”
–Johanna Kao