'A truly remarkable person has passed through our lives'

East Devon District Council leader, Councilor Paul Arnott. Picture: Paul Arnott (Image: Archant)

Earlier this month, Val Ranger, a wonderful resident of Harpford near Newton Poppleford, passed away at the age of 62.

All of those who knew her are left behind in the knowledge that an absolutely remarkable person passed through our lives.

Despite Val’s immaculate good manners, she did not stand on ceremony, and genuinely would not want a special trumpet blown now merely because she was serving as the Vice Chair of East Devon District Council - fully engaged in key meetings - till the day before she died.

And although her life was not Political, it was political, in the sense that she was congenitally unable to see an injustice or malpractice in the community where she lived without quietly and effectively getting involved.

Val could always be depended upon to be that person.

Locally, she’d been a leading parent at her boys’ primary school governing body, and made time to campaign in support of a veterans’ charity seeking better treatment for ex-service people.

She stepped up to save a bridge over the River Otter and campaigned to retain and restore a village hall. Eventually, she saw the need to become a parish councillor in a parish which she knew badly needed reform.

That’s how I first met Val ten years ago, in the infancy of what was in essence a district wide residents’ association turned local party, the East Devon Alliance of Independents.

Val won a district seat in both 2015 and 2019, when she was instrumental in changing the party in power for the first time in 45 years. Despite being in the vanguard of a seismic change, her ability to deal with councillors of an opposite persuasion with humour and grace was renowned across the chamber.

And yet the Val I came to know would not want to be remembered just for this, albeit that she valued her work both at the district council and as an educator in a second career at Exeter College immensely.

It was one of the privileges of my life to have had many long conversations with her since her diagnosis in October 2020 all the way to the morning she passed away, and as we could have guessed this divulged the story of an amazing woman long before all her life of public service.

The first passion In Val’s life had been horses, gaining - through sheer hard work, and from a relatively humble background - the respect of a female patron back in a Surrey stables as a teenager.

All who recall her radiant smile, sparkling eyes and quiet but firm voice will be unsurprised that she had an uncanny ability to soothe troubled horses. In her late teens and twenties this took her across the globe.

Val then built a great reputation in Kentucky and Miami, the two key areas of the US equine flat-racing world, before moving to opportunities in New Zealand, Australia and the Middle East.

If you’ve ever wondered how highly strung racehorses managed on jumbo jet flights across the world, it was because people like Val – who was clearly supreme – comforted and persuaded them on these long journeys.

Returning to the UK after many years of travel, Val settled in Harpford thirty years ago.

She had come as a child with her parents to Sidmouth for many wonderful holidays and like so many people in East Devon, born and bred and incomer alike, she simply loved the area, and felt blessed to be striding around it with her dog, or taking part in gig-racing off the coast.

Now Val has left us, after eighteen months more than anyone with her diagnosis could have expected, all lived with a noble courage and her incisive wit.

We offer our profound sympathies to her adult sons, Richard and Chris, and thank them for lending their mum to us, her heartbroken, admiring and ever-loving friends.