In Memoriam
Richard B. Ainsworth, Jr.
Dick Ainsworth passed away on September 3, 2021. Below are his obituary as well as the essay he wrote on the occasion of his 50th Yale reunion. You can also read a story on Dick in a local newsmagazine, and another story on this website featuring Dick Cheney.
Obituary
Dick Ainsworth
1964 graduation
Richard B. (Dick) Ainsworth, Jr., of Bratenahl, OH, an experienced private investor; active and committed philanthropist; amateur “political junkie,” Republican Party activist, long-time friend of former Vice President Dick Cheney (Yale class of 1963); fine-art collector; and active on many fronts in spite of a long battle with kidney disease, a severe blood clotting disorder, and four major brain surgeries.
Beloved husband of Joan (nee Horsburgh) for 55 years, loving father of Rick (Leslie) of Dublin, Ohio, and Alison Ainsworth of Seattle, WA, devoted grandfather of Meredith Claire and Lydia Grace Ainsworth of Dublin, Ohio, dear brother of John R. (Joanne) of Chatham, New Jersey, and Sally Anderson (Vince) of Chicago, Illinois; uncle to many nieces and nephews; son of the late Richard B. and Mary Ainsworth, two accomplished lawyers against whom Dick claimed he “never won an argument!”
Dick Ainsworth
in recent years
A native of Shaker Heights, OH (as was Joan, his high school sweetheart), Dick was a 1960 graduate of University School, Yale University (BA), and the University of Michigan (MBA). He was especially proud of having served three years aboard the USS OGDEN (LPD-5), an Amphibious Landing Platform Dock type of warship, as a combat-tested and decorated Navy officer and Vietnam Veteran, who suffered a 100% combat-related disability within the U.S. Veterans Administration. His subsequent 48-year multi-faceted business career consisted of a series of executive positions at Reliance Electric, Acme Cleveland Corp., Kirtland Capital Corp., and several banks and various financial service and consulting firms.
Outside interests and activities in the Greater Cleveland Community included 15 years as a trustee (and former Board Chair) of the Conservancy for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP), a volunteer fundraiser and a member of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine’s Council for the Advancement of Academic Medicine, as well as having served as a member of the Cuyahoga County Republican Party’s Executive Finance Committee. Dick also held a six-year Presidential appointment to the Federal Service Impasse Panel in the George W. Bush Administration.
Dick and his wife Joan were also patrons of and major donors to University School, Breakthrough Charter Schools, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals of Cleveland, The Cleveland Foundation, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, The Western Reserve Land Conservancy, The Cleveland Clinic, Blue Coats, Inc., Yale University, The University of Michigan, and Wells College.
In addition to the above, Dick was also a seven-year Stage 5 kidney dialysis patient, who had to spend 15 hours a week immobilized and strapped into a dialysis treatment chair in order to get his blood artificially purified. And yet, he never complained or felt sorry for himself about this cruel disability. Dick will always be remembered in Cleveland for his subtle, understated sense of humor and bad puns, modest demeanor, quietly upbeat and generally positive attitude, incredible determination and energy to see things through, and a general zest for life (as well as for U of M Wolverine Football).
Apart from University of Michigan football, Dick truly loved Cleveland sports, his residential real-estate investing, active involvement in local philanthropy, studying and collecting fine-art works, reading, volunteering, and luxury train travel.
The family prefers that those who wish may make contributions in his name to Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park, 1403 W Hines Hill Rd, Peninsula, Ohio 44264. A Funeral Mass will be held Thursday, September 16 at 11:00am in Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church, 19951 Lakeshore Blvd., Euclid, OH 44119.
Reunion Essay
by Dick Ainsworth
Published in 2014 in the Class of 1964 Reunion Book
Greetings and best wishes to all at our fifty-year mark. To recap the Ainsworth story: wife and best friend Joan and I have enjoyed a wonderful marriage of 48 years and produced two accomplished and happy children-Rick, 44, a rising executive with Alliance Data Systems in Columbus, OH, and Alison, 40, a National Park Service fire ecologist and vegetation specialist in Hawaii. We are also proud of our two very active granddaughters, Meredith, 13, and Lydia, 11, of Dublin OH, as well as daughter-in-law Leslie and son-in-law Kip Ballard.
I graduated from Yale after four rather undistinguished but fun-filled years with a B.A. degree and enlisted in the U.S. Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, RI. Without ever having heard of Vietnam during my years of formal education, I ended up serving two years there aboard the U.S.S Ogden (LPD-5), an amphibious assault ship home-ported in San Diego, CA, where Joan and I were married in 1965. As one of the more junior officers aboard ship, I was assigned as Boat Group Commander, responsible for patrolling around the mother ship in a speedboat on the lookout for floating mines, getting our Marines in Mike-boat landing craft to the right target beach at the right time, as well as for ferrying troops and supplies up the Cua Viet River to Da Nang and back.
After four proud years in the Navy, I enrolled in the Univ. of Michigan Business School, as a much more serious student than I had ever been at Yale, received my M.B.A., and returned to Cleveland to begin a business career built around a variety of investment management, treasury and corporate finance, and private equity positions. As a rather sad commentary on the downward trends of our local economy, four of the eight companies for whom I worked over the past 40 years are no longer in business-and a fifth is showing signs of following suit. On balance, though, resilience prevailed, the overall rewards outweighed the risks, the good guys and gals outnumbered the bad, and we've been able to maintain a very fulfilling lifestyle over the years. Underlying it all has been a productive and constantly expanding relationship network of good friends and business associates, many of whom are Yale classmates and other alumni.
Ainsworth family wedding in February 2011
For many years our family's primary recreational interests revolved around vacation travel. Several weeks were spent every summer in Joan's family cottages in the Les Cheneaux Islands of Northeastern Michigan, and we always managed to get to Naples, FL for a week or two every winter. Over the past decade, though, we have spent several months a year at a villa in Rancho Santa Fe, CA, just north of San Diego, but half way to our daughter's Hawaiian home.
As a result of several serious health issues encountered over the past decade, which include a bout with kidney cancer in 2001, an emergency appendectomy in 2003, four brain surgeries in 2004 following a subdural hematoma from a fall, and partial knee replacement in 2009, I decided to broaden my range of outside interests. In addition to our extensive travels and my lifelong support of Cleveland and U of M sports teams, I now enjoy balancing a variety of part-time business, philanthropic, political, and public service activities with my family concerns. These have included serving the past several years as a consultant and senior advisor to HPM Partners, LLC in its Cleveland office; board memberships with three corporate start-up ventures; board chair and member of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Association for 10 years; one of seven Presidential appointees to the Federal Service Impasses Panel for seven years; and membership on the Executive Committee of the Cuyahoga County Republican Party for 13 years.
Looking back at our time together at Yale, one cannot help but be struck by what a simpler, more innocent and globally isolated society we then shared. For most of us, the 1950's concept of international travel did not extend much beyond a trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario. The amount of subsequent progress on so many fronts, as well as the geographical dispersion of so many classmates beyond their original home bases, has been truly mind-boggling.
Our parents would be amazed by all that has transpired and by how much we have all changed over the last 50 years. Yet, in spite of the occasional temptations to change our permanent residence to a warmer clime, Cleveland remains for Joan and me and many of our friends a vital part of our lives — culturally, medically, and socially — in spite of its many socio-political challenges and shortcomings. My fervent hope is that somehow, some way our citizenry will be able to muster the political courage to embrace and successfully implement the many promising initiatives, already started, necessary to positively impact our state and region's future. To do otherwise and see this once proud area continue to erode would be a real tragedy. For all its historical contributions to our country's growth and development, Cleveland and its citizens deserve better going forward.
Meanwhile, in the spirit of the glass always being half full, every one of us needs to remember to keep smelling the roses, staying close to family and friends, and hoping for at least one more Ivy League football championship team before we call it a day.