LEBANON — Jack Ragle hated Brussels sprouts. Nevertheless, when the Meals-on-Wheels volunteer served them, he ate them, out of respect for people all over the world going without lunch that day.
An educator who left his mark on prestigious institutions around New England and countless people who studied there, Ragle, who died at home on Dec. 19, 2018, at 97, inspired others with his wisdom, energy and optimism. But it was his humble, compassionate spirit — his inability to reject a morsel of food knowing someone, somewhere was hungry — that most defined his life and drew people into his presence.
“He had this aura of acceptance and gentleness,” said Ragle’s daughter, Allison Kennett, of Canaan, with whom Ragle lived for the last three years of his life. “He was thoughtful and quiet and believed there was a solution to everything if you looked hard enough for it.”
A resident of Lebanon for most of his adult life, Ragle devoted himself to his church and community, often in modest ways: making coffee for church meetings, folding bulletins, picking up trash along the road, sharing a kind word with a stranger or quietly donating money to a neighbor in need. He brought that same spirit of service to his career, which spanned 50 years and took him to institutions ranging from local public schools to Kimball Union Academy and Dartmouth College.
“He was just a genuine good soul,” said Kit Creeger, who worked with Ragle at Kimball Union Academy in Meriden.
Born in Boston in 1921, John Ragle — known to everyone as Jack — demonstrated selflessness at an early age. Six years older than his brother, Tom, he never brushed him off or grew angry with him. “He taught me to play games. We used to take long walks together to settle the affairs of the world,” said Tom Ragle, who lives in Guilford, Vt. “I don’t remember any serious dispute between us.”
After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1943, Ragle joined the Army Air Corps and was almost immediately shipped off to Italy to serve in World War II.
While on his first mission as a bomb strike photographer for a B-27 bomber squadron, a job he assigned himself to, Ragle took off his parachute because it was hindering him from getting into position over the open bomb-bay doors with his enormous camera. When he bent over to take the photo, he somehow disconnected his oxygen tube from its source, grew lightheaded and began to fall. A gunner grabbed him just before he fell out of the plane.
Ragle told that story with a grin, but there was another that pained him. Just before one scheduled flight, Ragle became ill, and his best friend went up in his place. As the plane landed, it was blown up. “He had to go with his suitcase and pick up pieces of his best friend’s body,” Kennett said.
With the war behind him, Ragle settled into family life and began a long career in education. Following a year of graduate study at Harvard University, he got his first teaching job at Springfield Junior and Senior High School in Springfield, Vt. On his first day of teaching, he was pacing the front of the classroom when he fell into a large wastebasket and had to crawl out.
“If that happened to any other teacher, he would never regain the respect of the class,” Tom Ragle said. “But they loved him there.”
In 1966, Ragle became director of teacher preparation at Dartmouth College — but only after securing an agreement to continue teaching one high school class in a public school so that he could stay connected to the classroom, Tom Ragle recalled. A few years later, Ragle became the first director of Dartmouth’s Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program, and in 1972 he became headmaster of The Governor’s Academy in Byfield, Mass.
“He had this gracious presence that radiated through the school,” said the Rev. Peter Hey, who attended The Governor’s Academy when Ragle was headmaster and reconnected with him years later, while serving as a minister in the Upper Valley (he now serves in Concord). “I was drawn to his inner strength, the way he was both calm and decisive, knew who he was and lived with great integrity.”
When Ragle retired from The Governor’s Academy in 1983, the school presented him with a book of letters from students and teachers. “I can never remember seeing you without a smile on your face,” one said. “You are a man of principle and your strength of character has been an inspiration. I have never heard you utter an unkind word. You are a corner post, the salt of the earth,” said another.
Those comments were testament to Ragle’s strength at a time when life was less than idyllic, said Kennett, who grew up on campus and remembers giving her father plenty to worry about. But even in those times, he loved her as generously as ever. “No matter how horrible a child I was, he was always there for me,” said Kennett, one of Ragle’s three children. “If I was in trouble, I felt comfortable calling my dad.”
After retiring from Governor’s Academy, Ragle took a job teaching English and coaching tennis at Kimball Union Academy.
“My dad loved the ground level of education. His preferred place in the hierarchy was the classroom,” Kennett said.
At a 2017 class reunion, during which he was awarded the Kimball Union medal, Ragle expressed the same sentiment. “I’ve never had more joy in the field of education than I had for the 14 years that I came here and worked in the classroom,” he said.
That joy was contagious.
“He was just an iconic father figure. The kids absolutely adored him,” said Creeger, who served as music director during Ragle’s years at the school and is now associate director of communications.
Ragle served as a mentor to countless fellow teachers and students, Creeger said, and was perhaps known best around the school for giving impromptu concerts on his harmonica, a hobby he never gave up.
He had plenty of other hobbies too, and a huge appetite for adventure. He played golf and taught sailing and designed boat race courses for the Sunapee Yacht Club. He was a Red Sox and Patriots fan and a regular at Dartmouth women’s hockey games. He also loved going to the Lebanon Opera House and was in a few productions of his own as well, including A Christmas Carol at KUA and Godspell at the Lebanon United Methodist Church, where he was a member for decades.
Throughout his life, Ragle kept his brain active as well. “He was a scholar. He was always learning, always teaching,” said Linda Armstrong, choir director for the Lebanon United Methodist Church and Ragle’s friend for more than 30 years.
He was always listening too. Ragle believed strongly in open dialogue and thought there was a peaceful solution to every problem if people were just willing to work together.
“He was not a person who held onto anger or approached things with anger. He always approached them with reason,” Armstrong said.
In the early 2000s, the church initiated the process of becoming a reconciling church, meaning that it welcomed people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Ragle had serious reservations about the change at first but agreed to hear people out. “We went through a long series of discussions, and he actually changed his point of view,” Armstrong said. “He made it very well known that he had changed his opinion.”
One change Ragle refused to accept, however, was technology. “He hated computers,” Kennett said. “He said, ‘I’m keeping my pencil.’”
With that pencil, Ragle wrote letters by hand every day to relatives, former students and colleagues and far-flung friends.
Since Ragle’s death, mail has been flowing in the other direction. Kennett has heard from dozens of people whose lives were touched by Ragle, and last week, Armstrong got a letter from a former church secretary who had come here from Peru and was working on passing the U.S. citizenship test. She shared how Ragle came to the office almost every day to test her on her American history.
It was simple acts like this that endeared Ragle to nearly everyone he met. And though he never looked for recognition, these acts didn’t go unnoticed either. In 2014, Ragle received the Micah Award, an annual award bestowed by the Upper Valley Interfaith Project on a person who exemplifies the verse from the book of Micah in the Bible: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
People loved returning Ragle’s kindnesses too. The church choir once performed the children’s song Dem Bones, hand motions and all, just because Ragle got it in his head that he wanted to hear it. About four years ago, Bob Lewis, another friend Ragle met at church, arranged for him to go on an “honor flight” from Manchester to Washington, D.C. A neighbor he met on one of his walks started bringing sweets to the house and taking him out for seafood in Maine.
If he tolerated these indulgences, Ragle lived a selfless and simple life to the end. In his retirement years, he voluntarily gave up driving and walked or took Advance Transit all over the place, Kennett said. Often, he’d stand at the side of the road and wave to people or strike up conversations along his route.
One day when Ragle was still living on his own, Kennett dropped by his house for a cup of tea. “It was absolutely dreadful,” she recalled with a laugh. When she asked how he’d made it he confessed that he’d steeped the tea bag in recycled hot dog water.
If he was judicious with his resources, he was never stingy though. Ragle gave money to numerous causes and once rented an apartment for a year for a family that was down on their luck. “He couldn’t afford to do things like that, but he did them anyway,” Kennett said. “He was always willing to help somebody, no matter what.”
Creeger, who stayed in touch with his mentor through the years, recalls Ragle telling him that he had found a new calling in his retirement years. “He really made it his business to take care of other people in the community of his age,” he said.
Ragle also continued to devote himself to his family. He took care of his ex-wife, Shiela MacLaren, when she was terminally ill and helped raise one of Kennett’s sons while in his late 60s. He loved taking walks and chatting with his grandchildren, one of whom told Kennett “he always felt like he could talk about anything with him. He didn’t judge people,” she said.
In his waning years, Ragle longed to remain helpful and hated being a burden. In his 80s, he got a job tending the breakfast bar at the Days Inn in Lebanon, and after he gave up his own home and moved in with Kennett, he was always looking for ways to help out, from feeding the cat to washing the dishes. “He just wanted to be useful,” Kennett said.
To anyone who knew him, there was no doubt that he was. “People felt honored to have known my dad and felt the impact,” Kennett said. “Many people have commented that he was an inspiration to them.”
Sarah Earle can be reached at searle@vnews.com and 603-727-3268.