Husband, wife find strength together

They were newlyweds —- full of adventure, full of courage —- when they jetted off to Africa.

Elaine and Gordon Rondeau were starting a two-year stint in the Peace Corps. But they also would end up starting a family. While there, Elaine gave birth to two daughters, first Lisa, then, 15 months later, Renee, whose middle name is “Olubunmi,” which means “God Gives Me” in Yoruba, a language spoken in Nigeria.

Twenty-nine years later, their second born was violently taken away.

Renee was murdered on Halloween night in her upscale Chicago apartment during a robbery.

A family shattered. And the adventurous parents, who loved to travel, found themselves not wanting to get out of bed.

“You go through horrible ups and downs. And one of us needed to maintain enough strength to pull the other one along,” said Gordon Rondeau, who lives in Marietta. “Sometimes, I would just say to Elaine, ‘Come on, let’s get out of this house!’ and I would take her to Hiawassee [Ga.]. We would just leave for a couple days and stay at an inn surrounded by mountains.”

Since the 1994 murder of their daughter, the Rondeaus have grown more dependent on one another as a source of strength and comfort.

“We are the same Elaine and Gordon, except there is a hole in our hearts,” said Elaine Rondeau. “And even after 48 years of marriage, we are each whole, independent beings, but we have become one in our goals.”

One of their main goals is to prevent the acts of violence that took their daughter’s life. Involved in several grassroots organizations designed to help at-risk kids and prevent violence, the couple created the Renee Olubunmi Rondeau Peace Foundation and started a scholarship foundation in their daughter’s name at Augusta College. They are currently working with state legislators to strengthen the Georgia Crime Victims Bill of Rights, pushing for several measures, including ensuring families get the chance to make a “victim impact statement” and that they be informed of an offender’s early release from prison.

Renee, fluent in four languages, was working as a corporate trainer when she was accosted by a man and woman outside her Chicago apartment and forced inside. When she tried to flee her apartment, she was strangled. One of her assailants is serving a life sentence without parole. The other was sentenced to 30 years.

The Rondeaus co-write pieces for the Crime Report Magazine. But they also encourage each other in hobbies (Gordon will offer his technical savvy to help his wife get the dimensions just right in her oil paintings. Sometimes, he even serves as her art model, holding a pose for hours. And Elaine always gives advice when her husband photographs images of North Georgia lakes, Cape Cod sunsets or clouds shaped liked angels).

And they exercise together —- even if one needs a bit of a nudge. “I am an exercise buff, and I go the east Cobb Y about four times a week. I bike. I swim. I lift some weights and I have to say to Elaine, ‘Come on, let’s go,’” said 70-year-old Gordon Rondeau, a retired IBM executive.

“I always say, ‘I don’t want to go. I really don’t want to go. But then an hour later, I say, ‘Thank you so much for making me go,’” Elaine Rondeau, 71, said.

The AJC recently sat down with the Rondeaus inside their four-story home, teeming with photographs and paintings of their two daughters, and surrounded by peach trees and butterfly bushes. They each have their own studio —- one is for painting, the other set aside for photography. They often converge in a wing of the house that looks like a busy office, dedicated to their crime prevention work.

Q: How did you survive as a couple after the loss of your daughter?

Elaine: We were always there for each other. Gordon helped me a great deal by simply being there and holding me. I would go with him to baseball games, even though I am not a big baseball fan. I’d just go and people watch and enjoy the atmosphere. He would go with me antiquing, even though he hated it. But we also knew when to leave each other alone. If he wanted to run or swim 75 laps, I would never say don’t do it. And he would leave me and let me meditate when I needed to.

Gordon: There are those days you just don’t want to move. And I would tell Elaine, we have to get out of the house. We would go to the Georgia mountains. We would go on hikes. We would take a pontoon boat down the river and stare at the water… . We also recognize that we each grieve and feel the loss of our precious Renee in our own way. We became friends with a couple who like us, lost a son to homicide. The mother was very much an extrovert and wanted to tell the world what had happened to them. The husband, an introvert, decided early on it was a personal matter and he didn’t want to talk openly about it. It became a severe point of contention between them, ultimately leading to their breakup. They failed to realize that every human being is different and deals with grief in their own way. This has not come easily for us, however. It’s been a learning process.

Q: Your crime-prevention work is a team effort. How do you decide who does what?

Gordon: We really do complement one another. I am the technician. I build the Powerpoint presentations. I do the “facts,” and she supplies the human side —- the feelings and emotions. When we go to conferences, I do most of the grunt work like set up, and Elaine does the outreach.

Q: Travel has always been a big part of your relationship and your life. You lived in Africa and Germany. What kind of travel do you do these days?

Gordon: We went to Mexico two years ago, and we are planning a trip to Italy once the stock market recovers. Our last ski trip was in 1994. The loss of Renee consumed us for several years, and we’ve never gotten back to it, though we may still do so.

Elaine: Every October, the month that Renee was murdered, we spend time in Cape Cod. We rent a cottage for a month. I paint. Gordon takes photographs. We go kayaking. We eat lobster and fried clams, and Gordon must eat one of these humongous homemade cinnamon buns from a Greek bakery, and we sit up on a dune and eat it and drink our coffee. … We meditate, and we light candles and have a memorial service for Renee.

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