[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 178 (Wednesday, December 9, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1744]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      IN HONOR OF JON DANA RAGGETT

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. SAM FARR

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, December 9, 2015

  Mr. FARR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and 
accomplishments of a remarkable man and to mourn his passing. Jon 
Raggett was a brilliant engineer, an enthusiastic and accomplished 
builder of kayaks, and a tireless and generous philanthropist who 
founded a nonprofit whose mission was to build schools in developing 
countries. He was also a lifelong friend of mine, who died following a 
sudden illness on September 26, 2015, at the age of 71.
   Jon Dana Raggett was born July 9, 1944, and he grew up in Carmel, 
California, where his love for boats and the sea was born. Jon 
graduated from Princeton University with an engineering degree, 
received an MS from Stanford University, and returned to Princeton to 
complete his Ph.D. in civil engineering. Throughout his engineering 
career, he brought his keen analytical mind and his imaginative 
creativity to projects in structural engineering, earthquake research, 
and the aerodynamic effects of extreme wind on bridges. Through West 
Wind Laboratory, which he founded in 1988, he performed wind studies on 
major bridge, architectural, and industrial projects all over the 
world. Closer to home, Jon worked on the Golden Gate Bridge, including 
the creation of a suicide barrier and a retrofit to improve the 
performance of the bridge in high winds, and he also worked on the new 
span of the Bay Bridge. John also served as a member of the engineering 
faculty at Santa Clara University and the Naval Postgraduate School.
   In 1994, inspired by Theodore Roosevelt's admonition to ``do what 
you can with what you have,'' Jon founded Schools3, a nonprofit 
corporation which began as Jon's attempt to use his engineering skills 
to address problems of poverty in the developing world. Jon worked on a 
design for a three-room primary school with an office-storage building 
and a latrine which could be built with concrete blocks, a metal roof, 
and finished with plaster walls. This design could be built 
inexpensively all over the world, and through Schools3 Jon was able to 
fund and complete the construction of 71 schools in Africa, Honduras, 
and India. Jon donated his time and the time of his assistant Ann 
Keeble to Schools3, so every dollar contributed went directly towards 
the construction of a school, with no overhead, administrative, or 
marketing costs. In 2002, Schools3 received a commendation for this 
work from the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee in its report on 
Foreign Operations.
   Jon also used his structural design skills to create musical 
instruments out of plywood and furniture which was inventive and 
playful. But his primary passion was for building boats, and designed 
and built countless beautiful kayaks over the years, no sooner 
completing one project than he began thinking about how he would 
improve on the design for the next boat, and there was always a next 
boat. At Jon's service, his sisters-in-law quoted from Kenneth 
Grahame's beloved The Wind in the Willows: ``Believe me, my young 
friend, there is nothing--absolutely nothing--half so much worth doing 
as simply messing about in boats.'' No one believed this more deeply 
than Jon Raggett.
   Jon and his wife Tory, a talented artist whom he met when they were 
both 10 years old, raised two sons, Mark and George. When grandchildren 
Joe, Hugh, Mae, and Owen arrived, Jon took delight in introducing them 
to the joys of being on the water. Jon's love of his family, his deep 
commitment to doing what he could to make the world a better place, and 
his impressive accomplishments in civil engineering combined to create 
an extraordinary man. His untimely death is an enormous loss not only 
to his beloved family and many friends, but to the world which he 
worked so hard to improve. Mr. Speaker, I ask the entire House to join 
me in celebrating the life of this exemplary man and his remarkable 
accomplishments.

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