Richard P. Ryan worked at an air conditioning manufacturing company, but he dressed and acted like a corporate executive when he met his future wife, Lynne. He was 31, she was 19. He wore three-piece suits, smoked a pipe, drove a sports car.
"That's what attracted me to him," Lynne Robertson Ryan said. "He was charming."
Richard P. Ryan, of Suwanee, died Friday from complications from a fall. He was 78. The body was cremated and no service is planned.
Ryan was born on April 21, 1934, in Syracuse, N.Y. He graduated from vocational high school and attended Lemoyne College in Syracuse then Syracuse University, where he was a member of the crew team, according to his brother, Bill Ryan. He served in the Army for four years and went to Korea, though he rarely talked about his time there, Bill Ryan said.
He loved learning, and in the early 1970s his company paid for him to take courses on computers in New York City. He received multiple job offers after that, Bill Ryan said. One was in Rochester, N.Y., another was in Miami.
"He said, 'If I'm going to have to move, it's going to be somewhere warm,' " Bill Ryan said.
The couple loved their life in Miami, Lynne said. Each week felt like a vacation, and the two would scuba dive, canoe in the Everglades and play tennis. He even traded his beloved sports car for a minivan so they could transport all of their scuba equipment.
In 1979 he received another job offer in Atlanta, which he accepted, but the transition was difficult, Lynne said.
"It was hard for him to move here," she said. "Not that we didn't like it, but it was a different life."
After retiring from Federated Department Stores in Atlanta as a system specialist, he spent his time reading, playing tennis and listening to classical music. He loved reading, Bill Ryan said, and the deeper the material, the better. James Joyce was one of his favorite authors. He even read while watching sports.
"He always had a tremendous library in his house," Bill Ryan said. "The last time we were down there, he said we could take any books we wanted. I took Joyce."
It was his waning interest in reading that clued relatives and friends to his dementia. About five years ago he started exhibiting signs of the disease, and it especially worsened last year, Bill Ryan said. He was surprised to learn that his brother wasn't even reading the newspaper anymore.
But he never lost his dry sense of humor, his wife and brother said. Once, Ryan noticed that his niece, Bill Ryan's daughter, was wearing boots with large heels.
"He looked at her and asked, 'When did you start wearing orthopedic shoes?' " his brother said. "I'll always remember his sense of humor."
In addition to his wife and brother, he is survived by his sister-in-law, Susan Ryan, Syracuse, N.Y.; half brother, Michael Ryan; half sister, Sheila Mack; mother-in-law, Eleanor Robertson; and sister-in-law, Susan Robertson, all of Harpursville, N.Y.; brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, Donald and Robin Robertson, Bainbridge, N.Y. and Doug and Lucy Robertson, Hardwick, N.Y., and several nieces, nephews and cousins.
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