Necrology

Michael John Ryan '68

Dec. 13, 1946-Mar. 1, 2021

Michael John Ryan ’68 died on March 1, 2021. Born in Toronto, Ontario, he was raised in DeWitt, N.Y., a suburb of Syracuse, and came to Hamilton from Jamesville-DeWitt High School.

A philosophy major and a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, he was a member of the freshman basketball team, would later become a Dunham residential advisor for the 1966-67 academic year, and participated in the first Higby Conference (later renamed the Adler Conference) in 1966, the purpose of which, according to a report in The Spectator, was to assess “the present state of the College and areas of possible improvement.” One issue discussed at the conference concerned faculty-student interactions outside the classroom. When little seemed to change on that front, despite the stated best intentions of those attending the conference, the following March, Ryan was one of many of the student attendees who signed a letter decrying the absence of such engagement by the faculty.

For his fraternity, he served as pledge whip as a junior and president the next year. His senior year also included a more casual memory, as he reported in the 40th Reunion Yearbook: “I recall, albeit through a haze, Will (a.k.a. “Harry”) Twombly and I driving a bulldozer around the future Kirkland campus early on a Sunday morning of Spring Houseparty Weekend, wondering how it could ever be the same, but wishing we could be there to experience it.” He also recalled that on another occasion, he and Will made the happy discovery that the driveway ringing the main quadrangle could make a great motorcycle racecourse. 

From Hamilton Ryan moved to Boston where he worked on one of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiatives: that city’s Model City Program, an anti-poverty project. Among his tasks was writing applications for funding of three neighborhood community health centers. That work cultivated an interest in healthcare, which in turn led to his completing an MBA in healthcare management at Boston University. By 1976, he was employed at Cambridge Hospital. Ten years later he was ready for a change, and the Maine Medical Center in Portland beckoned. He would retire as its vice president for operations in 2012, having worked at that hospital for 26 years.

Not surprisingly, there is more to Ryan’s achievements than those implied by his post-graduate education and subsequent employment history. Not only did he serve the community as Maine Medical Center’s (MMC) representative on the board of the United Way of Greater Portland, he was also a founding member of the Greater Portland International Health Initiative (GPIHI), established in 2000 to partner “with an existing public health system in an underserved community whose citizens have limited access to health care.” This led to an ongoing relationship between MMC and Justinien University Hospital, the second-largest teaching hospital in Haiti, located in the city of Cap-Haitien, a partnership known as Konbit-Santé. 

Ostensibly, Mike’s job was to oversee the financials, but he did much more, according to one of the two founders of the GPIHI. For eight years, he provided management expertise as well as helped to pack containers with medical supplies and anything else that needed to be done. In the words of Dr. J. Michael Taylor, Ryan was “a giving human being” and one of the most modest individuals Dr. Taylor has known. Among the challenges that Ryan helped to overcome was the understandable suspicion by the Cap-Haitian health professionals concerning the intentions of this group of Americans, given the troubled history of U.S.-Haitian relations over many decades. Ryan was among those able to earn the trust of those professionals, thus ensuring a productive and positive collaboration to meet the health care needs of that community.

In retirement, Ryan and his wife of 47 years, Mary Louise McGregor, traveled to Europe and hiked and sailed closer to home. He also loved all kinds of music, from Motown to Italian opera. 

Ryan is survived by his wife, two children, and two grandchildren. 

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