Noble
“American,” Global British Citizen
By Walter Cicha
Eight days before fate dealt him a tragically decisive and
darkly ironic hand, nearly one year ago, he was
awarded a $3 million federal grant to lead a team in the development of new
technology aimed at improving health and extending life worldwide. Two days prior to that, he finished 33rd
out of 250 top cyclists from all over NY, New England and Quebec in the
ruthless 8.3 mile Whiteface Mountain Memorial Bike Climb. A week before that, he was 3rd by
a bike length in the Cambridge (NY) Balloon Festival Classic. He ran his first ever timed mile in 5:38, at
the Glens Falls Memorial Mile race, another two weeks prior. And just three weeks before, he finished 32nd
out of 252 runners in the demanding 5.6 mile Prospect Mountain Uphill Road
Race, near
On June 27th, we did our first hike of 2004, to
the summit of popular 3,254 foot Crane Mountain in the
Dr. David Ryan, British citizen, symbolized the best of
In a country whose best alpine skier is, against all odds, the current World Cup Champion (Bode who?), David took up the sport at age 30 and just over two short years later was winning Nastar racing medals at many of his favorite New England and upstate NY resorts. I never met anyone so determined not just to learn, but also to excel…and so able.
In a country that has built its fortune and prosperity on the backs of more than half a dozen generations of innovative, hard-working and brilliant citizens, David was pursuing a highly successful and totally dedicated career developing new superconducting magnet technology so tumors and a variety of other forms of diseased human cells and organs could be diagnosed and treated non-evasively with greater efficiently and precision. The special magnets, which would not require helium super-cooling (as is the current state of the art), were intended for incorporation into a new generation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) instruments that for the first time would be able to operate in remote and impoverished regions of the world.
In the spring of 2004, the General Electric Company submitted a final proposal to the National Institute of Health (NIH), lead-authored by Magnet Physicist Dr. David Ryan, who was only a few weeks away from being granted a U.S. Green Card. The NIH liked what thy saw and GE was awarded $3 million for the development of the highly humane MRI technology. Thomas Edison, a co-founder of GE over a century ago, also possessed the rare combination of an exceptionally strong back and exceedingly powerful mind that typified David Ryan.
David Thomas Ryan was born in Harregot,
North Yorkshire, England on October 8, 1971.
He excelled at school, especially in physics and math, from an early
age. His unusual talent was officially
recognized when he was awarded the prestigious Scott
Prize in Physics, for finishing first in his graduating class at
Not long after this, in the early months of the 3rd
millennium, I met David. It was on a GE
Newcomers hiking trip that I had organized to the summit of
As member of the Oxford Cycling Team, David became legendary
for his gutsy feats, typically pulling lesser riders behind him up rainy, gusty
hillsides en route to victory. He cycled
all over
David was renowned for falling asleep at most lectures, and then waking up at the end to ask a question or two that stumped many an Oxford lecturer and then GE manager. Fellow Brits Dr. Francis Crick (of DNA double-helix fame) and Dr. Bertrand Russell (leading 20th century mathematician and philosopher) supposedly shared the same peculiar idiosyncrasy.
October 19, 2002 was a cloudy, blistery day, the kind that
Dave loved for a quick cycle. We chose a
stretch of some road near
My most cherished memories of David were made in the late
summer of 2003, when together with a mutual friend and our bikes we boarded a
plane on 9/11 at JFK bound for
The Slovak custom guards made us feel like heroes as they
admiringly questioned us for the better part of ten minutes, causing a line of
I also met Zuzana -- my girlfriend
-- along our travels, at a restaurant in the Czech spa town of
Eleven tough months separated the Memorial Day Mile in 2004, when I last raced against David or anyone else, and Sean’s 5K Run this past April 24th. Sean Patrick French was a high school student who was killed a couple years ago as a passenger in a car driven by a drunken “friend.” Sean was also a 4:18 miler. Thinking of Dave the whole way, I gave it all I had and managed to finish 2nd in my age group. The competition lives on…
And it was all encompassing. Not only in sports, in everything we did. After a particularly hard training run on June 24, 2004, while we drank a few British beers and ate some “British curry” at his place, Dave showed me a book by the curious name “How Would You Move Mount Fuji?” It turned out to be a collection of rather intriguing brainteasers, amongst other things, and we spent the rest of the evening trying to discover who could solve them faster and more accurately. This took place amongst bicycle parts from multiple countries, dozens of books, an ironing board, various computer parts, three or four gigantic cycling route maps, assorted clothing spanning at least three seasons, and who knows what else; a menagerie of items strewn with perfect randomness all over his living room. Here too, we were in close competition, for David Ryan was the first person I met who could hold pace with me even in the fabulously entropic arena of housekeeping.
June 29th, 2004 -- a Tuesday -- seemed more like
a fall day, with unsettled clouds swirling above and unseasonably cool
temperatures. By 7:30 p.m., two shocked
and critically concerned travelers on
David’s last e-mail to me was sent at 5:58 p.m. on the last
day of his life. The topics of
discussion were our planned assault on Africa’s highest peak,
I am staring at my huge computer monitor, which I inherited
after David together with other electronic marvels, ski gear, and dozens of
books. What will the world miss out on
during the half century that Joshua Paniccia stole
from David Ryan’s life? How many
ingenious and life improving inventions?
How many lives could have been saved from his work? Would David have remained in the U.S.A, or
gone back to
As I freewheeled the 1300-foot descent from Petersburg Pass into MA on the first day of May, my feet agonizingly frozen to near numbness in the wet, 20 F (with wind-chill) weather, I could almost see Dave ahead of me smiling, enjoying every moment of this intense unification with nature and the world’s most noble mode of transport. For a while the pain went away, but only in my feet…
May 3, 2005
Dr. Walter Cicha was the
Director of the “David T. Ryan Ride for Safety Awareness,” held on October 9,
2004 in