This 18th of February is the 100th Birthday of my father, Frank Damon Ratcliffe! I’m sending this commemorative letter to all of you to pay tribute to a wonderful man and to give some family history you may appreciate.

Frank was born in Olney, Illinois, 400 years after Columbus “discovered” America. He was the eldest son of John and May Allen Ratcliffe. His father was a small-town banker. Grandmother Ratcliffe was the daughter of the Hon. James Allen, a Congressman from Illinois and a friend of Abraham Lincoln. She told of seeing Mr. Lincoln in her living room. There’s more to that story for another time. Frank’s brother, Allen K. Ratcliffe, was a dentist and the father of my cousin, Suzanne, who now lives in Sun City, AZ. He died prematurely in his early fifties of a coronary thrombosis. We kids loved him and his sweet wife, Aunt Essie, in our earliest years.

Frank played the flute and Allen the violin. They had a wonderful time with other musicians playing chamber music and whatever else. In those days public entertainment was a rarity so people did a lot of things to entertain themselves. I don’t think they were bored. They went fishing and they hunted for small game. A small-town boyhood that makes me think of Tom and Huckleberry. Frank and Allen attended school in Olney. We kids were always proud that my father played left field for the Olney High School team. That’s where my late brother, Allen Thompson Ratcliffe, got his exceptional baseball ability. Olney was a lovely little town of 6000 in southeastern Illinois, the home of the unique albino squirrel. I wonder if all the squirrels in Olney are still white.

Frank took a degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana in 1915. Thereafter he worked for the Fairbanks Morse Co. in Beloit, Wisconsin, first in the scales division and then he specialized in enormous diesel engines which were used for municipal power plants and in rotary oil drilling rigs.

It was in Beloit, of course, where he met the lovely Nanette Thompson. They became engaged but the United States went to war against Germany in 1917. Frank joined the Navy and served in European waters until final victory of the Allies in November, 1918. He used to tell of playing the flute in a band or orchestra while on leave in Paris. At the famous Paris Opera, I believe. At that time, also, he remembered that Paris was shelled by the infamous “Big Bertha”, an enormous cannon which could shoot some 76 miles from behind German lines. Frank’s ship was the “Prometheus”, a repair ship for the fleet.

After his discharge from the Navy, Frank returned to Beloit and married Nanette on 15 March 1919. I was born nine months and two weeks later, in the last 45 minutes of the second decade of this century. Frank’s and Nanette’s family grew when Allen was born on 23 January 1921 and sister Nancy Jane came to us on 9 January 1923. We were a happy little band.

In the winter of 1925 we moved to Olney and Frank commuted to the office in St. Louis. There we found great love in the Ratcliffe grandparents as well as in Aunt Margaret, Uncle Bill, Allen and Essie, Suzanne and a host of fine small-town folk. Country school.

Grandfather Ratcliffe died in 1926, Grandmother in 1934. We moved to Springfield, Missouri in 1926 where Frank represented his company in municipal power plant installations and planning. In 1928 he was transferred to the Oil Field Division and we moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. While Frank prepared a place for us, mother and the three of us sojourned again in Olney for a few months. Frank bought a brand new brick house at 1520 South Florence Avenue, a house which became the launching pad for all three of us kids.

From our earliest days, perhaps at five or six years of age, Frank had Allen and me out throwing, catching and batting baseballs and playing football. From him we acquired our love of sports. Later, in that wonderful Tulsa neighborhood, full of kids about our ages, we carried on with every imaginable sandlot sport including roller skate and ice skate hockey (a little pond nearby would occasionally freeze over), basketball, foot races, bike races, baseball and football (we didn’t seem to need helmets and pads, just a ball, thank you). With our father, Allen and I learned to play golf on a oiled-sand green course which Dad nicknamed “Broken Glass Acres”. It was during the Great Depression and of fancy things to do there were none. Oh yes, we did go to scout camp every summer up in the Ozark foothills, two weeks (for $25.00). Nan and Frank would come up for a visit on the Sundays.

Frank sang in the choir faithfully in the First Presbyterian Church. He would take the three of us to Sunday School at 0930 and we’d go to church at 1100 until about 1220. While, as kids, we just took that as a matter of course, the influence of church upon us was quite profound. Thanks to that, I heard some inspiring missionary doctors (Clothier of the Cameroon, Africa, and others) and I’m sure that had a strong influence on my choice of profession.

Frank was a very successful engineer but he had a tough problem, possibly induced by the types of people working in the tough world of the oil business. He was subject to occasional bouts of heavy drinking. Never in our sight at home. In her anxiety and desperation, I suppose, mother enlisted me in the effort to help him get away from the practice. That was pretty heavy for me. We loved him so much and he was otherwise the PERFECT father. I can still see that little boy, myself, pleading with him to stop drinking. Miraculously, some years later, all by himself without any aid from AA or anyone else that I know of, he stopped drinking and smoking cold turkey. He never smelled a cork again and enjoyed the occasional pipe. He had the strength of character to achieve that single-handed.

I cannot forget the time around 1937 when Frank and Nan took Nancy back to Johns Hopkins to the endocrine specialist, Dr. John Eager Howard, and the famous neurosurgeon, Dr. Walter Dandy to see if something could be done for Nancy’s lack of normal growth and development. She was born with a pituitary deficiency (growth hormone, etc.). At that time, sadly, nothing could be done. Today that condition can be corrected. There was such a special bond between Frank and little Nancy! I shed a tear as I recall that. Nancy had a triumphant spirit. Despite her disability, she was a bundle of energy and the smartest one in the family. She had some college work, became a Registered Nurse, married dear Floyd Everitt, an aerospace engineer with Lockheed, and had an exemplary life with a million friends. How courageous she was! They could not have children. What a mother and father they would have been!! When Nancy was 30 she developed a malignant melanoma on her right calf. Despite radical surgery and many surgeries later, she died at the age of 38 in my care at Peninsula Hospital in Burlingame. It was my privilege to be with her and to give her relief of pain in her last days. Frank and Nan, already very sick herself, were crushed at her loss. Floyd died a few years ago of heart disease. I am sure the loss of Nancy had a lot to do with his final illness. They were a love match. Nancy and Floyd lie in Santa Clara.

Fragments of memory. There were the ballgames of the Tulsa Oilers at old, wooden McNulty field; the delicious grape pop, peanuts and popcorn. Later the Oilers were in the AA Texas League and we as a family were rabid fans. The football games at Skelly Field with the Tulsa University Golden Hurricanes, our all-time heroes. We were members of the “Knothole Gang” by which we had free tickets. Christmas trips to Beloit by car; we were so excited we couldn’t sleep the night before. Once we went by train to Beloit and slept on a Pullman. What a thrill that was! A few summer visits to Grandfather Thompson’s place at Lake Waubesa near Madison, Wisconsin. Barbecues and fishing with Frank from Thompson rowboats. The day Frank came home with the first car radio. Another when he brought home a little ball of snow white fur, our Great Pyrenees “Chinook”. Despite “hard times” there were myriad delights in the Tulsa years.

In September, 1938 I boarded the train for Baltimore and Johns Hopkins University. Frank and Nan waved goodbye after such sage advice as Frank’s “Easy does it”. From that time on I wasn’t around home very much. A million letters. There were visits, of course, particularly when they moved to Carmel in 1958. The house at Yankee Point was their crowning achievement. The idyl wasn’t to last, however, because Nan began a long seven year decline in health leading to her death on 5 December 1965. To Frank’s eternal credit, which cannot be overstated, he took care of mother in her progressive incapacity all those years. She could have been put in a nursing home but his loyalty and love forbade that. Frank and I took Nan back to Beloit on the train and buried her with her parents.

Frank carried on at Yankee Point alone. He was a mainstay of the bass section of the church choir. He was in several bowling leagues and played golf. He was a very private person and it was difficult to pry him away from Yankee Point for a visit. We made many trips to Carmel to see him. In 1975 Joanne and I went to Saudi Arabia for a two-year stint but ended up staying nearly 11 years. We naturally visited Dad every time we returned to the States which added up to about 25 times. Allen came to live at Yankee Point in the late 70s so that Dad had good company.

We came home for Christmas in 1980 in what was to be our last visit with Dad. I remember so well taking him for a drive up to Carmel late in the afternoon of 27 December. He seemed in good health. When we returned to the house the sun was just setting. We stood and watched a glorious sunset together. It is a sweet memory, for Dad was to be taken from us suddenly with pneumonia and heart failure the following tenth day of January when Joanne and I were back in Saudi Arabia. We returned immediately for the final services together with all of the Ratcliffe offspring and their families. The service was held in the old familiar Presbyterian Church where he sang so faithfully for over 25 years. The American Flag over the coffin was given to Allen. Dad joined mother in Beloit. And now, eleven years later, Allen is there too.

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There is so much left unsaid in this account but I want to pay this tribute to my father and to our old nuclear family of which I am the only survivor. What a rich experience that family afforded me! How profoundly my life has been shaped by Frank, Nanette, Allen and Nancy. The values and ideals, the gift of life...............