Mark Ravenscraft, an outspoken political wunderkind who was elected as a Summit County commissioner at age 23, has died.
His family reported on social media that he died Wednesday morning in Florida, where he had been living since the early 1990s.
“He lived a life of passionate advocacy and inquiry,” Paul M. Ravenscraft wrote. “His endless wit and enthusiasm for life brought smiles to everyone he crossed paths with. We will miss him every day.”
Mr. Ravenscraft, a Democrat who used a wheelchair because of childhood polio, was elected as a county commissioner in 1970. He also served as an Akron city councilman in the mid-1970s and as a county councilman in the 1980s.
At age 43, he resigned from his county position in 1991 and moved to Miami to work for the Stein Gerontological Institute, a senior citizens think tank.
While in Florida, Mr. Ravenscraft formed the Ravenscraft Group, a marketing, advertising and internet research firm specializing in healthcare and services to people with disabilities; and ran for state Senate.
Mr. Ravenscraft — who spoke Spanish, German and some Russian — was a colorful figure in Summit County politics, easily making allies and enemies at the same time.
He once claimed he was kicked out of grade school for wearing an “I want Adlai badly” button.
In 1986, he also single-handedly passed the county budget through the council’s finance committee after other members didn’t show up for a hearing because they were miffed at him. Mr. Ravenscraft proceeded with the hearing as if the other committee members were present.
“The chairman will entertain a motion for a favorable report,” he said after each item. Then, “I so move. Discussion? Those in favor, signal by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign.”
When Mr. Ravenscraft left county government, former Councilman Pete Crossland recounted a story to the Beacon Journal about Mr. Ravenscraft accusing fellow council members of owing their souls to others.
He pointed to everyone around the room identifying to whom they were beholden and then addressed himself. “Everybody knows I don’t have a soul,” Mr. Ravenscraft reportedly said.
A profile in the Akron Beacon Journal in March 1991 described him this way: “He’s been called one of the most intelligent people ever to hold office in the county and praised as a representative of the little man. He has been cursed as being derisive and detrimental to enlightened, cooperative government, and labeled a demagogue.”
An Akron native, he received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1969 and his master’s in business administration from Baldwin Wallace College in 1984.