About Jack Ryan
    Home
Ruth, Woody and Jack Ryan

I was born in 1943 in Corpus Christi, Texas.

My parents were Woodrow and Ruth Ryan. My father was serving in the United States Navy at the Naval Base in Corpus Christi during World War II. My mother went to Texas from Ohio to be married. After my birth we stayed in Corpus Christi until the war ended and my parents returned to northeastern Ohio near Akron.

We lived for a while near MacDonaldsville, then in East
Liberty. My parents bought a house near Greensburg where
we lived until I was in the ninth grade. After that we moved to Atwater, about 20 miles east of Akron.

My brothers were Dan and David.

Ryan Boys
David, Dan, and Jack

After graduating from Atwater High School in 1961 I attended the
College of Pharmacy of the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati,
Ohio from 1961 - 1966.

After Graduation I entered the Department of Biochemistry of the
University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida. While in Graduate
School I met and subsequently married Janet Link Norton of West
Haven, Connecticut. Janet was a student in the Department of
Cellular and Molecular Biology and the Department of Biochemistry.
We were married in 1968. We completed our work and had our defense of dissertations within a week of each other.

While in Miami I witnessed the arrival of some of the lunar material from the first manned flight to the moon.  If you'd like to read about this and see some pictures, click HERE.

After this we moved to Tucson, Arizona, where we lived for about three years. Janet worked first with Dr. Milos Chvapil and then with Dr. Marcus. I worked as a freelance photojournalist and then as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Gordon Tollin at the University of Arizona Department of Chemistry.

We left Tucson for a chemistry teaching job for me at El Paso Community College in El Paso, Texas. I had a full time teaching position. Jan worked part time tutoring science and math, then full time teaching chemistry. Our first son, Clint, was born in 1977. Clint is now married to Clarissa.

We moved to El Dorado, Arkansas, during the summer of 1978. I had a job teaching chemistry and physics at Southern Arkansas University - El Dorado. Our second son, Scott Arthur Ryan was born in 1981.

Janet and I retired from teaching at South Arkansas Community College at the end of the Spring Semester in 2010. We would both recommend retirement to anyone able to do it!

My hobbies include photography and Z scale model trains.

For a list of my publications, please click here.

The Ryan Family

Jack, Janet, Scott, Clarissa, and Clint
(Photo by Jack Ryan, Photoshopped by Scott Ryan)

Page updated: 19 June 2019
Page created: 22 January 2012