John Ryan of Boston, 81 died June 22nd, at Mass. General Hospital. He was being treated for prostate cancer.
Ryan graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Business School and was a graduate of Lowell H.S. A veteran of World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy in Michigan and in Washington, D.C.
Ryan was the founder and president of Ryan, Elliott and Co., a commercial real estate company, for over 40 years. He was a past chairman of the Mass. Housing and Finance Agency.
According to NEREJ founder and owner Rolly Hopkins, "John Ryan was one of the first advertisers and a loyal booster of the Journal. John learned his craft personally from the Hunneman and Co. founder, Carlton Hunneman who assigned John to find new locations for all the firms being uprooted by the new Southeast Expressway. John signed so many leases and found so many new locations that he decided to continue the successful exercise on his own with the help of a young, very personable gentleman named Graeme Elliott. The rest was a very lucrative history."