His funeral was front page news. Thousands of people lined the street from Scranton’s City Hall, where his body had been lying in state, to St. Peter’s Cathedral, where a Requiem Mass would be celebrated for the repose of his soul. Dr. Edward W. Ryan “had come home for the eternal sleep after years of absence in foreign lands,” the front-page story reported. The honor given him was testament to the respect and love so many had for this healer and humanitarian.
On that day, Feb. 11, 1924, Superintendent of Police M.J. McHugh and Police Capt. Chris Rose led the procession in an automobile, with a squad of mounted officers and patrolmen on motorcycles behind them. Behind the gun caisson marched a detail of soldiers. Gov. David J. Davis served as grand marshal. Scranton Mayor John Durkan marched, along with his department heads and members of city council. The Ringgold Band played. R.E. Weeks headed a large delegation of area Red Cross workers, some from New York and Washington, D.C. Representatives from foreign nations marched with them.
Who was this man who brought so many people to Scranton on that snowy February day? The flag that draped his casket offers, perhaps, the best insight.
It was 1914. The Austrian Army fired its guns at Belgrade. Dr. Ryan had charge of a hospital with 1,500 Serbian soldiers, some dying and most seriously wounded. How could he save these men from the enemy’s assault? America had not yet entered World War I, but Dr. Ryan carried with him an American flag. He ordered it hoisted above the hospital. The enemy shelling ceased, and the Serbs were able to move their wounded to a safer location.
Later, the U.S. State Department reportedly questioned Dr. Ryan about the incident. The act was heroic, but America was not involved in the war. The outcome of that investigation was not made public, but Dr. Ryan continued his humanitarian work all over Europe, treating the wounded and the sick, feeding women and children and tending to the sanitary conditions around them. His work brought him high honors from a host of nations.
Born in the Pine Brook section of Scranton in 1884, he earned a medical degree from Fordham University in 1912. In 1914, he became director of the Red Cross unit in Serbia. Typhus killed thousands of people, and it struck Dr. Ryan, who, for months, lay desperately ill. Following his illness, he returned to the United States where, in the interest of the Red Cross, he embarked on a two-month speaking tour.
In March 1917, he paid a visit to his sister, Mrs. Henry V. Lawlor of Jessup. A month later, the United States entered the war. Dr. Ryan set sail for France. At the direction of the Red Cross, he returned to Serbia and took charge of relief work. In August of 1917, Saloanika, Greece, was burned. Thousands were left homeless. Reports of Dr. Ryan’s efforts to feed and care for them were broadcast around the world — France, Greece, Finland, Lithuania and others. Many sent representatives to his funeral.
From there, Dr. Ryan moved to Estonia, where his efforts brought an epidemic under control. Until 1922, he worked throughout the Baltics, an Army lieutenant colonel in charge of the American Red Cross Commission to Western Russia and the Baltic States. From the Baltics, Dr. Ryan went to Persia, now Iran. War and disease had threatened his life everywhere he went, but it was here, in the capital city of Teheran, that he succumbed to malaria on Sept. 12, 1923. He was 39 years old. He was laid to rest at Cathedral Cemetery in Scranton.
Next week, the local history column takes a look at a startling incident in the life of this humanitarian.
CHERYL A. KASHUBA is a freelance writer specializing in local history. Visit her at scrantonhistory.com.
Contact the writer: localhistory@ timesshamrock.com
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Local History: His funeral was front page news. Thousands of people lined the street.
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