Veterans honor flight includes a Viatorian brother

Posted September 30, 2013 11:03 am

Submitted by Gerlach Group

Viatorian Brother Leo V. Ryan, of Arlington Heights since 1999, has been chosen to participate in the Wednesday, Oct. 2, World War II Veterans Honor Flight. The last living member of the committee that built St. Viator High School and the school’s first president, Ryan, 86, is also the last living Viatorian World War II veteran in the American province of the Clerics of St. Viator.

Ryan also worked as dean of DePaul University’s Richard H. Driehaus College of Business from where he retired in 1999, as assistant dean of Marquette University’s College of Commerce and founding dean of the university’s continuing education program.

Ryan was an infantry noncommissioned officer and acting sergeant major at Camp Roberts in California before his appointment to the command staff of Admiral W.H.P. Blandy Operations CrossRoad, which in 1946 tested the fourth and fifth atomic bombs in Bikini Atoll in the Marshall and Caroline Islands.

His story appears in the book, “Arlington Heights Greatest Generation,” a public service project of the Peoples Bank of Arlington Heights and St. Viator Class of 2009-2010.

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