Obituaries

Categories Obituaries, Obituaries | 1970-1979Posted on

Roger E. Mann ’70, MAT ’72

Roger E. Mann ’70, MAT ’72 passed away peacefully on October 19, 2022.

He is survived by his wife of 25 years Tessa Tilden-Smith, a daughter Tanya Mann (Jeff), a son Thor (Amy), and five grandchildren (Anna, Sebastian, Julian, Stella, and Sanna), his brother Todd (Jane), niece Jamie (Rob), and dear cousins and friends.

Roger was born into a secular Jewish family in the suburbs of New York City. He enjoyed the big city experience and developed a love for the Brooklyn Dodgers. In his teenage years, he engaged in civil rights activism, and managed his friends’ rock band, before heading off to college at Wesleyan in Connecticut.

Roger Mann

Inspired by his intrepid parents and his own sense of adventure and service, he left Wesleyan for Friends World College, and in 1968, he arrived in Kenya, where he began a 15-year off and on love affair with East Africa. He returned to Wesleyan for a Masters in African History. In the early 1970s, he was involved in Vietnam war protests, and worked as an asparagus farmer, and as a journalist, in Vermont and West Virginia. He then returned to Africa, to Zambia to teach secondary school. Over the next few years, he served as a correspondent for the Washington Post, NPR, and High Times, and had his son with a Swedish nurse. As the 70s ended, he moved his family to London, where his daughter was born, and then to Tanzania, teaching Danish development volunteers how to thrive while living in African villages.

Looking for a different type of adventure, he returned to the U.S. and got an MBA from Yale. He then began a business career in the Washington D.C. area, including projects such as management consulting, a water storage company, real estate investing, and a sandwich cafe. His last and most enduring venture was Care-Free Pools in Naples.

In 2000, he and Tessa had moved to Naples to be closer to his parents. He delighted in tennis, wildlife sightings, beer talks, blues festivals, alumni meetings, lively discussions of current affairs, and evangelizing for electric cars. He loved international travel as well as local getaways, and frequently visited with his grandchildren, enjoying with them time in nature, riding roller coasters, and entertaining them with stories of his varied experiences.

In retirement, he continued his civic service by working for the 2020 census and volunteering in the foster care system. His “Done” files included: found a forever partner, visited India, trekked in Nepal, owned a business, saw the Redwoods, worked in Africa, farmed, toured the Galapagos, improved at tennis, and celebrated Tessa’s 70th birthday with her family in Kent.

His lifelong courageous authenticity, steadfast beliefs, and strong will guided all his actions, including his clarity and decisiveness in his last week to return to Naples, cast his ballot, and donate his body to science.

In lieu of flowers, kindly consider a donation to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (www.lls.org).

Categories Obituaries, Obituaries | 1980-1989Posted on

Paul Perkins Ratliff ’88

Paul Perkins Ratliff died after a 13-month battle with brain cancer on December 22, 2021. He was 56 years old. He was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1964 to Jack and Clare Ratliff. He graduated from St. Stevens High School in Austin, Texas, and attended Wesleyan University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1988 with a double major in film and theater. 

Paul was multifaceted; he seemed to live many lives—he was an actor, a cabinetmaker, a writer, a therapist, an ethnographer, an adventurer, a storyteller, a humorist, a deeply observant and wise human. In his presence you felt truly seen, heard, understood—and funnier, smarter, and more interesting somehow. He approached life with a sense of play and humor that was steeped in his love of language—which sometimes took the form of haikus, limericks, an artful turn of phrase. These were experiments in expression, grounded in connections he had to the people in his life and his collection of experiences. 

He was a theater actor in Chicago for much of the ’90s. There he was a founding member of the Great Jones Theater Company. He performed at the Goodman Theatre, one of Chicago’s most preeminent theatres, as well as at smaller theatres all over Chicago. He earned praise from The Chicago Tribune and other Chicago theatre critics for his roles in American Divine, the collected short plays of Joe Pintauro (for which he garnered a Jeff nomination,) and Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day among others. 

He went on to work at a small start-up in Chicago called E-Lab, doing work that combined anthropology and product design to help companies think better about people’s experiences with their products. E-Lab was eventually purchased by Sapient, a multinational consultancy. With them Paul moved to London, where he lived for seven years. Across this time, he worked as a consultant for organizations like Ford, Unilever, Frito Lay, Steelcase, Johnson & Johnson, UPS, and BMW, and conducted research all over the world. 

He moved back to the U.S. in 2008 where he met and married his wife Maggie Siff.  They welcomed a daughter, Lucy Luna Ratliff, in 2014. During this time he turned his attention to a lifelong interest, psychotherapy. He returned to school and received his master’s from Pacifica Graduate Institute. At the time of his death, he was a licensed MFT in practice in Manhattan, New York. 

He is survived by his parents Jack and Clare Ratliff, his wife Maggie Siff, daughter Lucy Ratliff, and his brothers John and Ben Ratliff.  Not to mention friends all over the world, with and for whom he cultivated a lifelong practice of daily ordinary joy.