Finding Solace at His Home Away From Home

Ron Meadwell is a grateful man, despite it all.

For one thing, he has friends in Camarillo, 5,000 miles from his home outside London, who are so big-hearted that they installed a plaque and put up a memorial tree to his wife Joan in a local park.

And when vandals ripped that tree up, the city replaced it.

“I’m more thankful than you can know,” he said as he sat out a cool, gray day in the home of some Camarillo pals. “It’s a strange world, isn’t it?”

Indeed.

Today, Meadwell flies back to London. For two weeks, he’s been on holiday. He and his friends have traveled up the coast, let loose at a party or two, sat for hours at big, boisterous dinners. Not many Europeans would choose Camarillo over Cannes, but Meadwell has a unique association with it.

It was a bouncing white ball that first brought Meadwell here and an unexpected crew of lifelong friends who keep him coming back.

In 1979, the call went out among the soccer officials of Surrey: Who can host some young American footballers?

The Meadwells stepped forward, and before they knew it, 16 fresh-faced soccer players arrived from the California village of Camarillo, which, the lads were quick to point out, did NOT rhyme with pillow.

“We took them to Buckingham Palace, to Windsor Castle, and on a boat ride up the Thames,” Meadwell recalled. “And we thought that was it.”

It wasn’t.

In a few months, the Meadwells were asked if they wouldn’t mind rounding up 16 soccer players in Surrey for a stay in Camarillo.

And so it went, from the cliffs of Dover to the California coast--for two decades.

Much like longtime residents, Meadwell speaks of Camarillo in nostalgic, bittersweet terms. “I remember when the strawberry fields lined Las Posas,” he said. “Now it’s homes and--what do you call them--mini-malls? Everywhere you look. It’s tragic . . . “

Long after the Meadwells’ two boys were grown, they would spend six months a year arranging the perpetually upcoming trip. Joan, a caterer for the BBC, took care of the bookkeeping, the reservations, the details that crop up when 16 families choose to ship their sons to parts unknown. Ron, a drywall contractor, took care of the field trips and the soccer matches.

“She did the paperwork,” he said. “I did the donkey work.”

In some ways, it was the same every year. In California, the British boys were wowed by the marvelous variety of cars on the freeway, the swimming pools, the theme parks. In Surrey, the boys from Camarillo were astonished by the rain, and the brilliant greenness.

But Meadwell was surprised by something else.

“I had always pictured California as a kind of nomadic place,” he said, “with people dipping in and out for a few years and then going back to wherever they came from.”

But the soccer parents of Camarillo were a different breed. To the Meadwells’ astonishment they made terrific friends--people such as Larry and Debbie Hawley, who would keep in touch with them at least once a month over a decade.

That’s why Joan’s seven-year fight against breast cancer was so tough for people half a world away.

“We wanted to help her out, to comfort him,” said Debbie Hawley, “but they were so far away.”

Joan died in November 1998. The plaque commemorating her lies near the soccer fields in Valle Lindo park. It reads: “IN LOVING MEMORY OF JOAN MEADWELL, CO-FOUNDER OF CAMARILLO-SURREY SOCCER TOUR.”

A crowd showed up at the dedication--kids in soccer outfits, the program’s alumni, parents who had accompanied squads to England or opened their homes here. Just months later, the tree was destroyed.

“My friends didn’t want me to know about it, but someone let it slip,” Meadwell said.

With Joan’s death, the soccer exchange died.

“My youngest daughter said perhaps we should carry on, for her sake,” Meadwell said. “But I just couldn’t. This was her thing. It was her pride and joy.”

Meanwhile, Meadwell plans to visit his Camarillo friends again next year.

“It’s my second home here,” he said.

Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.