Here's the fabled Tom Ryan photo

When the late Tom Ryan’s wife died May 6, memories of Tom started coming back.

Recovering from our sloth, we finally searched through the old Tower Topics to find the classic photo of Tom Ryan. Somewhere the original photo is tucked away, but this reproduction from an old Tower Topics must satisfy,

We also have learned how the lead on Tom’s own obituary was written. The lead, we have learned, was written by Terry Oblander who is now at the Plain Dealer.

When Terry visited Tom during his last days of illness, Tom asked him to write the obit. He said to be certain not to put anything up high about his being among those who landed on Normandy Beach on D-Day. “Just write that I was a newspaperman,” Ryan said.

Tom Ryan died February 9, 1985 at age 64 of cancer after a short illness. The lead on his obituary said simply “Tom Ryan was a newspaperman.” Oblander noted further: “Hundreds and hundreds of Akron area people knew this man. When he covered Barberton for the Beacon Journal, Tom Ryan got more news going to Mass at St. Augustine Catholic Church or on a Ryan shopping trip than most reporters did in a whole week.”

Oblander recalls that he and Ryan used to write obits and had a “cup of coffee” bet about who would write the best obit. “Tom always won,” Oblander said. He would rummage through the obits to be written and find a nun who had died. “How’re you going to beat a guy writing an obit about a nun?” Oblander asks.

Click on the headline to read that obituary.

Now here’s the Tower Topics story published with the photo in December, 1972

A Smoker Deluxe

Meet Tom Ryan, one of the most remarkable men at the Beacon Journal.

This seasoned state desk reporter has the uncanny ability to transform Pall Mall ashes into a gracefully hanging Grecian arch, much to the amazement of awed onlookers. Stranger still, the phenomenon is no fluke .., it's his personal trademark.

"I DIDN'T start smoking until I was 26," he clarifies, "but ever since then I've had a job where I sit at a typewriter. I'm always too busy to take the cigaret out of my mouth, so I guess that's how the long ash forms. See, I don't inhale."

Tom concludes that concentration is a key factor in the cohesion of his arch.
He has tested the theory as he showers, shaves and even swims with the familiar Pall Mall poking out of the corner of his mouth.

"I THINK I drive my wife crazy," he admits. "You should see the trail of ashes I leave around the house for her to clean up. Of course, I do my share of cleaning, too . . .
about once a month, I completely de-goo my typewriter. "
Tom's wife has made him a promise, one she intends to keep: when he dies, the inscription on his tombstone will read, "The World Was His Ashtray."

"And that's the truth!" he laughs.

[Reprinted from the December, 1972 issue of Tower Topics]