LEACH, Ralph Emerson

LEACH, ROGGE, COLE, LUNDY, TURNER, TARINI, BLIXT

Posted By: Lynette Edsall (email)
Date: 9/12/2006 at 12:10:28

Rev. Ralph Emerson Leach

CHEROKEE, Iowa -- The Rev. Ralph Emerson Leach, 83, of Cherokee, formerly of Sioux City, died Friday, March 17, 2006, after a long, courageous struggle with multiple ailments.

Memorial services will be 10:30 a.m. Saturday at St. Paul's Indian Mission in Sioux City, with the Revs. Alan Scarfe and Glen Rankin officiating. Visitation and fellowship with the family will be held immediately following the service. Waterbury Funeral Service is in charge of arrangements.

Ralph Leach was born July 30, 1922, in Fall River, Mass., the first child of Ralph E. Leach, Sr. and Edna (Rogge) Leach. He grew up in the communities of Swansea and Somerset, Mass., and spent many summers on Cape Cod, where his parents ran a beach front refreshment stand. After graduating from Somerset High School in 1940, Leach attended the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism. World War II interrupted his studies and Leach joined the U.S. Army in 1943. He was trained as a cryptographer and eventually stationed in Yunnan Province, China. After nearly three years of service, Staff Sgt. Leach was awarded the American Theatre Service, Asiatic-Pacific Theatre Service with one battle star (Battle of China), Good Conduct and Victory medals and an honorable discharge.

He returned to the University of Texas, where he was active in various honor and political organizations and worked on the staff of the Daily Texan, where he also met his future wife, Gloria Cole of Edinburgh, Texas. While on the staff of the Daily Texan, Leach was one of the few to report directly from the site of the massive Texas City Disaster of 1947. Many of his bylines were distributed by national news media.

Gloria and Ralph wed on May 17, 1947, and he began a series of small town newspaper editorships in small towns across the state of Texas, culminating in the early 1950s with his rise to city news editor of the renowned Arkansas Gazette. This tenure proved formative for Leach, as he was on staff during the turbulent and historic Central High School integration crisis of the mid-1950s. The Gazette was later awarded the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of this milestone in the civil rights movement.

Troubled by the anger, intolerance and ignorance displayed during this episode, and still moved by the racial discrimination he witnessed firsthand in China and India, Leach abandoned his journalism career to pursue a different path. He hoped that by disseminating the teaching of Jesus Christ he would more effectively enable social justice and encourage compassion and tolerance among his fellow men and women. He entered the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, where he received a Master of Divinity degree, with honors, and was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1960. Leach served as parish priest in Arkansas, Mississippi and Kentucky during the 1960s, and simultaneously found himself more and more dedicated to the cause of civil rights and more actively involved in the movement. By the time he was living in Louisville, Ky., he was involved in a long and eventually victorious "Open Housing" protest, and on several occasions advised Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as they worked together on the campaign.

Ralph and Gloria became the proud parents of four children during these decades, and although the bulk of the child rearing fell to his wife, Ralph always found time to be involved in his children's lives and their schooling, and was lavish with encouragement for, and pride in, their accomplishments.

Continuing his evolution as a facilitator of social justice and equal opportunity, Leach changed careers in the late 1960s and joined President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty." He served as Manpower Director at Total Action Against Poverty (TAP), a community action agency in Roanoke, Va., and subsequently as Chief Director of the award-winning Bureau of Manpower for the city of Richmond. Leach later began his own business as a consultant in management and human resource development, working for various fellowships and foundations, including the Ford Foundation and the Southern Education Foundation. He also served as interim or supply priest at various congregations throughout Virginia and Colorado (where the couple moved to be near their eldest daughter's family), eventually relocating to Sioux City (where another daughter lived) in the mid-1990s.

Ralph, although semi retired, continued his social activism in Siouxland, serving as county coordinator for the Nader for President Campaign of 2000, and as regional director of the Kucinich for President Campaign of 2004. He created a newslist, Reclaim America, to reach out to other grassroots activists and spent much time and energy on the articles he posted to the list. He also served as a half-time supply priest at Calvary Episcopal Church and occasionally at Christ Episcopal Church in Yankton, S.D. and others in the region. After his beloved wife and companion of nearly 60 years died, Ralph moved to Cherokee in April 2005 to be closer to his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. He found the Cherokee area to be attractive and made many friends in his short time in the community.

Ralph Leach's life service can best be summed up by one of his favorite quotations by Bernard Shaw, and made famous by Senator Robert Kennedy, "Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?"

Survivors include three daughters and their spouses, Laura and Don Lundy of Lilburn, Ga., Rebecca Leach and William Turner of Aurelia, Iowa and Naomi Leach and Paul Tarini of Philadelphia, Pa.; a son and his fiancee, Stephen Leach and Sally Blixt of McAllen, Texas; six grandchildren, Johanna and Katherine Lundy, Elnora and Grace Turner, Ethan and Gabriel Tarini; and a younger brother, James Leach of San Antonio, Texas.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Gloria; his parents; and two sisters, Ruth and Joan.

Memorials may be made in Leach's memory to The Carter Center (www.cartercenter.org), Bread for the World (www.bread.org) and the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest (www.etss.edu).