Ronald Edmondson was born in Liverpool and was known to his Liverpool relatives as Bun, to his friends as Eddy and to his family as Pop. He left school at 14 and went to work as a tea boy and messenger for Liverpool Corporation and while there trained as a surveyor.
In 1942, when he was in the Army and stationed on Salisbury Plain, he met his future wife, Margaret, at a local dance. Her abiding memory of the time was that he carried his dancing pumps around instead of his gas-mask in his gas-mask case. They were married on 25 August that year.
Pop fought in North Africa and Italy and received a battlefield commission on the beach at the Salerno landing after all his officers had been killed or wounded. Thankfully, he came back from War whole, uninjured, and in good spirits. He also brought back with him a knowledge of an entirely new and unknown technology that he had seen in the secret war-time research department of Alfa Romeo in Turin: plastic moulding. With what he had learnt, he built his first moulding machine – and he always said he would have patented the idea if he hadn’t stolen it in the first place!
Pop working on his plastic moulding machine
When Margaret and Pop were first married they lived on the Progress Estate in Eltham in a tiny terraced house with the bath in the kitchen and an outside lavatory. With the success of the plastics business, they spent their golden years in Otford, surrounded by their ever-increasing family.
Pop was Founder and Life President of The Pop Club.