Obituary

Dr. Roy Menninger
October 27, 1926 - October 24, 2024

Roy Wright Menninger, physician, community leader, CEO and avid student of history, died Oct. 24, 2024, three days shy of his 98th birthday, at Stormont Vail Hospital in Topeka, Kansas.

A native of Topeka and the grandchild of a horse-and-buggy prairie doctor who, with his own two sons, started the world-renowned Menninger Clinic in Topeka in 1919, Dr. Roy Menninger devoted his life to family, patients, his community and the public’s understanding of mental health.

Dr. Roy was a gifted communicator, but he listened more than he talked. Whether sharing an informal lunch with employees or meeting with political leaders or Hollywood luminaries, Dr. Roy treated everyone with the same level of compassion and respect. He accumulated much wisdom in life and had a low-key but direct way of sharing powerful insights that could ease troubled hearts and worried minds.

Roy was born in Topeka on Oct. 27, 1926, to William Claire Menninger and Catharine Wright Menninger. The eldest of three brothers, he was an accomplished Boy Scout. He earned his first merit badge for horsemanship at age 13 and became an Eagle Scout just two years later. Roy also showed an early love for music, learning the piano and later the cello, which he played as an adult in the local civic orchestra for nearly 20 years. His boyhood dream was to become a locomotive engineer.

During the dark, early days of World War II, Roy was upset that others were serving their country but he was not. So he decided to secretly enlist at age 16. His father was away in Washington, D.C., serving, ironically, as Chief of the U.S. Army Medical Corps’ Psychiatric Division. As fate would have it, the recruiting officer in Topeka recognized his prominent name and refused his application.

Roy attended Washburn University and George Washington University before graduating from Swarthmore College in 1947. He then entered Cornell Medical School and graduated in 1951. His father, Dr. Will, delivered the commencement address. Dr. Roy served his residency at Boston State Hospital before transferring to Boston Psychiatric Hospital.

In 1951, Dr. Roy married Ann Catherine Colwell of Morristown, New Jersey. The couple had four children. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1972.

Dr. Roy was drafted into the U.S. Army and was eventually stationed at the 109th Field Hospital in Salzburg, Austria. It was actually his second trip to Austria: the first came in the summer of 1949, when he took a solo bicycle tour of post-war Europe. In a miscalculation he never forgot, he overshot the Allied occupation zone and found himself riding amid a column of Soviet tanks. A quick adjustment had him peddling fast across fields and woods, where he safely slipped back to the West.

After his service, Dr. Roy returned to the Boston area in 1955 and completed his training at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Through the late 1950s, Dr. Roy and several other local physicians had become increasingly alarmed by the arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and the growing prospect of nuclear war.

To demonstrate their concerns and dramatize the blast radius of an atomic detonation, the group led a peace walk from suburban Waltham to Faneuil Hall in downtown Boston, nearly 10 miles distant. In time, the group would attract other physicians, grow in size and ultimately formalize their association as Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Dr. Roy assumed leadership of the Menninger Foundation in 1967, following the death of his father, Dr. Will. His family’s legacy and the new responsibilities loomed large for the 41-year-old physician. Roy’s father and uncle, Dr. Karl, had long been nationally recognized leaders in the mental health field and had built the family clinic into one of just a handful nationwide devoted to behavioral health research, education and treatment.

Dr. Roy learned quickly on the job, winning over innumerable skeptics and guiding the foundation for the next quarter century as he juggled the competing demands of managing a complex organization while raising funds to ensure its survival. Through it all, meeting the needs and expectations of patients was his central objective.

He was similarly committed to the well-being of the many talented and diverse individuals that made up the foundation’s staff, and his personal affection for them was genuine. He pushed hard to foster a work environment of mutual respect, intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm for the mission at hand.

Unfortunately, health care was changing in the 1980s and `90s and the window for treating patients became increasingly brief as insurers demanded a limited, empirically quantifiable care regime. The foundation’s long-standing focus on individualized care fell out of favor and the organization struggled. Succeeded in leadership by his brother, Walter, in 1993, Dr. Roy continued to serve as Chairman of The Trustees until 2003, when the Menninger Foundation dissolved and The Menninger Clinic moved to Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

In 1973, Dr. Roy married Beverly Miller Ohse. Over the next 50 years, their enduring love story weathered near-constant travel on behalf of the foundation. When off of the road, Roy ardently pursued his love of stamp collecting. He also was a great reader and a life-long student of the writer Samuel Johnson, considered one of the most distinguished men of letters in English history.

His interest in Johnson underscored his relentless intellectual curiosity, and he never stopped reading and learning and using his mind. History was very much alive to him. He could easily articulate parallels between current events and the past, as well as the lessons contained therein.

His thirst for knowledge was unquenchable. Late in life and long-since confined to a wheelchair, he began teaching himself both Vietnamese and Ukrainian to better communicate with several caregivers at Brewster Place, his home for the last eight years.

Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the courage, determination and grace he showed in fending off a disease that slowly but inexorably robbed him of virtually every muscle in his body. Across more than 10 years, he never complained but instead focused on developing work-arounds to carry on with his broken body. His will was iron. When a physician at one point told him his odds for living another six months were considerably less than 50-50, he marked six months out on the calendar and basically said, “Watch me.” He lived another two years.

Dr. Roy was preceded in death by his parents, William and Catharine, and his brother, Phillip. He is survived by his wife, Beverly, his brother, Walter, and a blended family that includes Heather Visscher (Kirk), Pacific Grove, CA; Brent (Victoria), Overland Park, KS; Ariel McInerney (Joe), Cool, CA; Bonar (Ann), Merriam, KS; Fred (Julie), Lawrence, KS; Eric (Karen Hacker), Atlanta; Beth Ann, Topeka, as well as seven grandchildren: Hana Mayeda, New York City; Elias Menninger, New York City; Nathaniel Menninger, Atlanta; Wyatt Ohse, Chicago; Henry Ohse, Kansas City; Clare McInerney, San Francisco; and Grace Menninger, New York City.

A celebration for the life of Dr. Roy Menninger will be 10 a.m. Saturday, December 14, at Grace Episcopal Cathedral, 701 SW 8th Street, Topeka, Kansas 66603.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to Doctors Without Borders. You can go directly there with this link, https://t.ly/iKLD_. or sent in care of Kevin Brennan Family Funeral Home, 2801 SW Urish Road, Topeka, Kansas 66614.

Condolences may be sent online to www.kevinbrennanfamily.com