My elmer was Ted Ryan, WB6JXY (sk), www.TedRyan.bappy.com. As my good luck would have it, I went to John Burroughs Junior High School (JB) in Los Angeles, California, USA. This happened to be the public school whose district I lived in. Boys of the day were required to take shop classes. In rotation, I eventually got to take electric shop.
I met a large jolly fellow who was the electric shop teacher, Ted Ryan. He had us call him "grandpa." He looked like one. He was the person everyone unanimously wanted to play Santa Claus at Christmas time. He did not need any pillows under his Santa suit!
He would go on and give me (and thousands of others kids, and grown-ups too) a gift, ham radio, which gave me very positive values of fellowship and helping others. He called us "sweetheart." He frequently said "Grandpa loves you sweetheart."
He was always there with reassurance when "the code was too hard," or "the theory was too hard." Or when we were just scared of getting on the air and making a mistake. He was there with love and patience.
Ted Ryan was sort of a jolly missionary of ham radio. He loved it. His enthusiasm was contagious! He got us to love ham radio too.
He worked tirelessly to license people; 35 years of teaching ham radio. He put in long hours at JB. He had a long commute from the suburbs. He arrived early. He had us come early too. He would send 20-30 minutes of code practice to us each morning before school. Our after school code practice would be 30-45 minutes. On Thursdays after school we would have a shorter code practice for we had our amateur radio club meetings.
When he was not at his day job, two nights a week he taught for the San Fernando Valley Amateur Radio Club, W6SD. He taught Novice and General classes for our club for three-and-a-half decades. On Saturday, he taught people at his house who could not come at other times or taught anyone needing extra help.
Ted knew licensing people was not enough. He wanted to get them on the air. For teenagers, particularly from the low income parts of JB's district, affording a station was a problem. Ted solved the problem by giving, just like Santa Claus, dozens and dozens of stations to deserving young kids. W6SD members, and other friends of Ted donated old boat anchors or WWII radios to him, or he went to the surplus store and bought and fixed them so he could give them to underpriveleged kids.
His students often helped him fix the radio and make antennas for the donated novice stations. After school the rest of campus emptied quickly, but not electric shop. If you went to electric shop after school you would think school was in session. Ted would be sending code practice to us while we had were fixing radios, making antennas, stripping old radios and TV sets for parts. It was like Santa's workshop; and we were Ted's happy little ham radio elves.
I am very grateful to Ted for the gift of ham radio. His key went silent a few months ago (December 27, 2005, at age 85, because of cancer and heart disease). I honored him with a webpage www.TedRyan.bappy.com. I also got proclaimations from the U.S. Congress, the Governor of California, California State Senate, and Assembly, Los Angeles County and City, Los Angeles School Board celebrating his three-and-a-half decades of teaching ham radio. His son Roger Ryan, AA6EO and I set up a memorial club made up of Ted's alumni and friends and are appyling for his call sign to be our club callsign.
