Background
Ratcliffe was born on July 4, 1937 and grew up in Springfield, Ohio, where he met his wife, the former Judy Jones.
Ratcliffe was born on July 4, 1937 and grew up in Springfield, Ohio, where he met his wife, the former Judy Jones.
He decided to make a career as a Scouting professional and attended the National Training School.
He was awarded Eagle Scout in 1955 and as an adult was presented with the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. After graduating from Wittenberg University in 1959, he volunteered at the Scout center of the North Florida Council in Jacksonville, Florida. His first position was as the district executive in the Blue Ridge Council of Greenville, South Carolina.
He was first assigned as a scout executive in 1976, later becoming the Scout executive of the Heart of America Council in Kansas City, Missouri where he became Chief Soaring Lone Eagle of the Tribe of Mic-O-Say.
Prior to his selection as Chief Scout Executive, he was director of the Bachelor of Scientific Agriculture"s Central Region, headquartered in Naperville, Illinois. Ratcliffe also served as Scout Executive for the former Birmingham (Alabama) Area Council, circa late 1970s.
That council merged with two other councils in the 1990s to form the Central Alabama Council. On February 1, 1993, Ratcliffe accepted the position of the Chief Scout Executive of the Boy Scouts of America (Bachelor of Scientific Agriculture).
In March 1998, he met in Japan with leaders of the Boy Scouts of Japan to start an exchange program with the Bachelor of Scientific Agriculture. While there, he presented Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto with the Bachelor of Scientific Agriculture"s Silver World Award.
Ratcliffe said Scouting, "is one of the few programs that still focuses on values, and values seem to be a quality many of our young people lack today". The year before, in April 1997, Ratcliffe was arrested at Miami International Airport when the security scan showed he had inadvertently left a handgun in his luggage. During his tenure, Ratcliffe created the Nationally Coordinated Endowment Emphasis to increase the level of endowment giving to local councils.
He also created the James East. West Fellowship, the 1910 Society, and the Founders Circle to focus on endowments.
These efforts effectively doubled local council endowments and allowed National to direct funds to major improvements in the high-adventure bases. Under Ratcliffe"s administration, the Operation First Class program, now known as Scoutreach, was introduced to provide training and develop the resources necessary to serve at-risk youth in urban and rural areas.
Ratcliffe received a retirement benefit of $2.6 million when he retired in May 2000. He received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Wittenberg in 2004.
Ratcliffe lived in Southlake, Texas and served on the coordinating committees of the World Organization of the Scout Movement and the World Foundation.
Ratcliffe died on August 21, 2015 at the age of 78.