Born in Ontonagon where he spent his youth, Rodney Roehm was raised by his uncle and aunt Clyde and Irene (Roehm) Hayward. He graduated in 1940 from the Ontonagon High School. In the summer of 1942, he was in the US Air Corps Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and went to work for the Forestry Department at Isle Royal, Michigan as a student of the Michigan College of Mining and Technology in Houghton. Enlisting in June 1942, he reported for duty in Chicago, Illinois and started training as a Pilot in the US Air Corps. He received his Pilot's wings the next year and was sent overseas. Assigned to the 95th Bomb Group/335th Bomb Squadron at Horham, he was piloting B-17 #42-31565 on his third mission on 4 March 1944 when his Fortress was hit by flak. The damage to the plane made it impossible for him to fly it back to England and he ordered his crew to bail out over the Belgian-French border. Landing in a tree near Saint-Gobain in the Aisne department of France, Rodney managed to free himself and contact local villagers. He was helped first by a Mr. Beaurain in La Bovette, then by Mr. and Mrs. Frerlet in Saint-Gobain. He was arrested together with this couple by German police on 9 March 1944. Sent to Germany, he was interned at Stalag Luft 1 in Barth and freed in May 1945. Back in the USA, Rodney pursued his studies in mechanical engineering and had a long career in metallurgy, working in Michigan and Illinois, retiring from the Wyman-Gordon Company's Worcester plant in Massachusetts.