On 18 March 2016, family and many friends of Eric Rodda gathered at Scorrier Chapel, near Redruth, to remember and celebrate the life of a quietly outstanding Christian man.
Eric was part of the Rodda family firm which makes Cornish clotted cream, and the last of his generation. For many Cornish people, cream equals Rodda’s.
But things were rather different when Eric entered the world, midway through the First World War. His parents were devout Christians who attended Scorrier Chapel, where Eric’s memorial service recently took place. When he was ten he knelt at the communion rail and gave his heart to the Lord Jesus Christ. He never wavered from that commitment until the day he died.
Bible on the blankets
After his school days (he used to walk barefoot to the primary school in the next village), some initial local employment and some further studies at Camborne Technical College to train as an electrician, he volunteered to join the RAF in December 1939. He served as an electrical mechanic on aircraft in Gosport, and then in 1941 he departed from Liverpool for the nine-week voyage to Singapore via the Cape – where life was shortly to change dramatically following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Transfers to Karachi and then Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) followed.
Eric was not one to hide his Christian faith. On moving into a new billet he would leave his Bible on the blankets on his bed. It was never very long before the others in the billet knew what he stood for. He was baptised as a believer in a church in Singapore, which many of his fellows attended.
Making cream
He returned home in November 1945 to a world much changed … but one constant: his wife-to-be, Betty, whom he married shortly in – where else? – Scorrier Chapel. A few years later, he started working on the farm alongside his brother Willie. The farm started to keep turkeys at this time, but in 1953 the restrictions on making cream were lifted and the family restarted the cream business. It was a family business, and all members of the family were expected to work when needed, Eric and Betty included. Eric was still working in the creamery into his 60s.
Eric had four abiding passions in his life: Family (four daughters), the Business, Surfing (finally given up at the age of 89) and his Christian faith.
He was a member of Scorrier Chapel (originally Methodist, more recently FIEC) for more than 80 years. After the war he took on leadership roles. His calling was as a teacher, particularly of young people, and for many years he led a teenage Bible Class.
Encouraging the churches
Although based so firmly in Scorrier, his vision was not parochial. Many Christian workers benefitted from the use of Eric and Betty’s chalet down the coast at Gwithian. He supported and revelled in the meetings of cross-denominational evangelical fellowship still persisting in West Cornwall. Only a year before his death, at a family funeral, Uncle Eric summoned me for an inquisition, almost, into the work of my own church. Right up to the end, he was a sharp but warm, lively, no-nonsense, gospel man.
