John W. Ragsdale ’37

Walking dictionary and editor Jack Ragsdale died on Sept. 19, 1989, when he suddenly dropped dead while housesitting for a friend. The coroner said that Jack never knew what hit him.

Jack graduated cum laude from Lawrenceville, where he played football and was class historian. He majored in English at Princeton and was a member of the Intracollegiate Athletic Assn. and Colonial Club. After a stint in the advertising dept. of John Wanamaker's and five years in the Army, in which he rose to the rank of captain in the Signal Corps, he became associate editor of the Architectural Record in N.Y.C. By 1948, he was in Denver as building editor of the Record Stockman and then business manager of the Rocky Mountain Journal. While he was manager and secretary of the Denver Assn. of Home Bui1ders, he listed his business as public relations and ran a brilliant 1952 Denver Home Show. In 1957, he was doing market research and consumer and opinion surveys with Research Services, Inc. By 1959, he was president of Market Service Associates, editing and publishing various magazines, and in 1964, he was featured in an article in the Denver Post on a wild, 60-mile whitewater adventure on the Green River in Utah. After 1983, he edited and published the Good Life Inquirer, a publication he founded.

In 1942, Jack married Ronie Knapp, whom he described as "superlatively elevated above and beyond criteria of mere typicality," and they had two sons, John Jr. and Edgar, and two granddaughters.

The Class of 1937