May his memory be eternal.

Such sad news. Had a conversation with him at the Indy Colloquium...a very kind young man.

Condolences to his family and friends. May his soul be with God.

Requiescat in pace.

Ryan's funeral is at 2 pm EDT today. Please remember him in your prayers.

Grant him eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him

About 7 weeks before his death, Ryan Dingess and I went on a wild EPIC ROAD TRIP across America.

Our itinerary saved here:
July 13 - Williams AZ/Grand Canyon with noted hymnologist Kathleen Pluth
July 14 - Amarillo TX
July 15 - Dallas TX, tour of J.Ryan’s Anglican Church.
July 16 - College Station TX (was supposed to include a tour of the Methodist church, but was canceled due to covid)
July 17 - Natchez MS - tour of the former Cathedral with TLM.
July 18 - Birmingham AL, Vigil Mass at the Cathedral and dinner with Bruce Ludwick
July 19 - Savannah GA, tour of the Cathedral and dinner with DM Paul Thornock
July 20 - Charleston SC, tour of the Cathedral and dinner with DM Scott Powell
July 21 - Charlotte NC, weather issues
July 22-23 - Charlottesville VA, hanging out with former CMAA faculty member Brian Dean Sousa and friends.
July 24 - 28 Columbus OH, Mass at the Cathedral and tour of St. Mary in German Village
July 29 - Indianapolis IN, tour of important sites from the Indy Colloquium
July 30 - St. Louis MO, dinner with Ryan Patrick Murphy, tour of the Cathedral and ICKSP place, dinner with CMAA VP Horst Buchholz
July 31-August 1 - Omaha NE, staying at the rectory of the Ordinariate Parish and events with former CMAA faculty Dr. Daniel Page and Pastor Fr. Jason Catania
August 2 - Kansas City MO
August 3-4 Clear Creek Monastery OK
August 5 - Amarillo TX

It was a hell of a good time. When I dropped him off, he had many good prospects and hope for the future, but things sadly did not work out.

Here’s my memorial to my friend I left on Facebook.

It’s a really odd feeling to know that someone you just returned from a month-long EPIC ROAD TRIP with has died.

Ryan Dingess (known to his closest friends as The DINGESS) and I were neighbors on two occasions, he worked for me for a short period of time, and we were a part of an elite group of church musicians known as The Harambe Killers (due to the fact that we jokingly take responsibility for the death of Harambe). He was an odd fellow, full of quirky knowledge and passionate about very specific strange things. He did really nice work on a website for singing the Liturgy of the Hours, wrote the accompaniment books for the Simple English Propers of the CMAA, and has a number of compositions available online. He had Bachelor and Masters degrees in Jazz Piano from ASU.

When we left for the EPIC ROAD TRIP, I had 3 giant suitcases and an assortment of other things taking up most of the space in the car - and Dingess showed up with a tiny backpack that didn’t seem to contain more than a few items (“we can stop at a Goodwill and I’ll get some more stuff along the way”).

While on the road trip we stayed in some pretty cheap hotels. My rooms, with the exception of one in Natchez MS, were pretty much fine. Dingess doesn’t have my sort of luck, however. Twice during the trip he had random people show up at his room WITH WORKING KEYS in the middle of the night, he had bugs in his bed in two different locations, in one location he had a handicapped accessible room with ONLY a lower peephole that required him to lean down to see who was knocking, and if there were any loud people or screaming children staying in the hotel - the front desk clerk was always sure to put him there. At our last stop in Amarillo TX, he needed to use the restroom while I checked in. Once I was alone with the clerk, I told her to make sure our rooms were far apart. She asked why and I explained that he yodels really loudly in the middle of the night. I hadn’t made it to my hotel room yet before I got the text from him asking why the woman at the front desk was looking at him strangely. Our entire friendship was mostly based on us pulling pranks on each other, but I was sort of like the Road Runner and he was like Wile E Coyote, in that my pranks usually worked and his...

The idea of the EPIC ROAD TRIP was born out of a desire of three members of the Harambe Killers to drive from Arizona to Alabama to have dinner on Bruce Ludwick’s porch. It ended up with only two of us in the car - and rather than being a week long trek, it became an epic journey to visit with 6/7 of the original Harambe Killers (all except our legal counsel). I’m sure he was glad to spend good times with all of the folks we visited along the way, meet some new people of good will, to see your churches and organs, etc.

At a critical junction in his life, he and I were at an establishment on a Friday afternoon eating fish tacos. He was pondering dental school or something and I told him, “don’t go to dental school, DINGESS, do church music. It’s a hell of a life.” I’m not sure I should give advice to folks anymore after the years that followed... but I could tell he didn’t want to go to dental school. His passion was for church music, but he knew it was a rough life for most people who are in this business full time. From that day forward we used “it’s a hell of a...” to describe countless (usually good) things, as is evident in the attached dog video (there’s a video attached to the Facebook post where we both agree a dog Ryan is carrying is “a hell of a dog.”).

Kindly keep Dingess in your prayers, pray for his family, and feel free to share fun stories about The DINGESS in the comments here. He was a hell of a guy.

https://www.echovita.com/us/obituaries/az/mesa/ryan-james-dingess-11507868

So sorry for your loss, matthewj. Prayers for Ryan and for you as well.

Requiescas in pace, @ryand