John Morris Ryan died Oct.19, 2009, at Carolina Meadows Retirement Community, Chapel Hill, N.C. Services will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009, at Memory Hill Cemetery.

Mr. Ryan was born June 2, 1925, in Clarendon, Texas, the only child of Roberta Morris and John Wesley Ryan. After his mother was widowed, he moved with her to Wichita Falls, Texas, where she was a librarian in the public school. After graduation from high school in 1942, he attended Texas A&M until he volunteered for the Army on his 18th birthday, serving in the 334th Infantry Regiment of the 48th Division during World War II. He was wounded and captured in the assault on Germany in November 1944 and imprisoned in Germany until the end of the war.

He then joined his mother in Georgia where she was a librarian at Georgia State College for Women, Milledgeville, and enrolled in Georgia Tech. After graduating with a B.S. degree in industrial management in 1948, he continued his education at UNC-CH, graduating with a Ph.D. in economics in 1953. In 1949 he married Elizabeth Shreve of Milledgeville, a member of the history faculty of F.S.U. She continued graduate study and worked in the Southern Historical Collection of UNC-CH.

Ryan’s first professional position was as an economist in the research facility of United Gas Corporation in Shreveport, La. In 1958 he began a long career as a petroleum economist, with a variety of positions in companies related to Standard Oil of New Jersey (later Esso and currently Exxon-Mobil). He worked in Houston from 1958 to 1964 and in New York from 1964 to 1974 with assignments in Europe, India, Pakistan and Australia, gaining a reputation as an authority on the international petroleum industry. A transfer to Exxon in Huston in 1974 led to 17 years as economic adviser to the legal department. Retirement in 1991 was followed by a move to Chapel Hill, N.C. in 1993.

Dr. Ryan is survived his his wife, Elizabeth; and daughters, economist Nancy Elizabeth Ryan of Berkeley, Calif., and author Susan Ryan Sully of Asheville, N.C.

In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to the American Red Cross of UNC Hospice, P.O. Box 1077, Pittsboro, NC 27312.

Moores Funeral Home & Crematory has charge of arrangements.