Frederick Ramsay

Frederick Ramsay was a Baltimore academic, priest and writer.

Early life and education

Frederick Ramsay was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His father was a scientist and his mother was a teacher. He was raised on the East Coast.

In 1958, he graduated from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. In 1962, he earned his doctorate in Anatomy from the University of Illinois.

Career

He joined the Army for a brief period, then joined the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he taught histology, embryology and anatomy. He was also a researcher and later became the associate dean of the school of medicine. He was later the vice president for public affairs of the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, one of the oldest private psychiatric hospitals in the nation.

While still on the UMSM faculty, he pursued graduate studies in theology. In 1971, he was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church.

Throughout his life, he held many jobs, including as a tow man, a line supervisor at the BWI airport of Baltimore, insurance salesman, instructor at a community college, a substitute teacher and host of the "Prognosis" feature on the evening news for WMAR, an ABC affiliate in Baltimore.

His last job before retiring was as an Episcopal priest. He served two different parishes in the Baltimore area.

Retirement and novels

In his retirement, Ramsay began to write books. Though he had previously published academic articles on the immunological system and its relationship to cancer, in retirement, he began to write novels. He is best known for his mystery novels and has written several series.

His first novel was Artscape published in 2004 by Poisoned Pen Press. It became the first in the Ike Schwarz Mystery series, which was centered around a small town Virginia sheriff.

One of his most popular was the historical fiction Jerusalem Mystery series, which consists of 4 novels written between 2007 and 2014 and featured several characters from the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Between 2009 and 2016, he published mystery books in his Botswana Mystery series. Ramsay has said of this series:

My son lives, has raised a family, and works for the (Botswana) government there. I have (had) grandchildren there. One of them is being married as I write this, in Botswana. I have visited them and the country several times (not as much as I would have liked) and thought there was a place to set a different kind of mystery. The culture would necessarily dictate a different kind of sleuthing. I take no issue with McCall Smith. His Botswana is late twentieth century. You can still find Ma Ramotswe there, but the vast majority are modern in their outlook, the country is a model progressive democracy and very much of this century. If I were younger, I might very well have considered retiring to that country. I love especially, the northern part, the Chobe and that is the locale for the series.

Ramsay also wrote a few standalone novels. One of his favorite books that he wrote was Impulse, which he described:

It is semi-autobiographical. That is I was raised on a campus very much like the one I describe in the book. The characters are almost real and because of that, it was the easiest book to write of any.

Personal life

Ramsay was married his wife, Susan for over 30 years. They retired to Surprise, Arizona in 2000.

He was a father to her three children: Julie, Karen and Sam. He also had three children from his previous marriage: Jeff, Eleanor and Matt. He had six grandchildren: Jeff's children (Kopano, Ati, and Alex), Julie's daughters (Kiri and Allie), and Sam's child (Wyatt).

Death

On August 23, 2017, Ramsay died in Arizona from an aggressive return of kidney cancer. His daughter, Eleanor, described him as "the definition of a Renaissance Man." Before his death, he had completed 19 mystery novels and had almost completed his 20th book, The Onion. He was an octogenarian at his death.