Raymond Ralph Conrad

A memorial service for Raymond will be held Saturday, February 3, 2024 from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM at Kraeer Funeral Home and Cremation Center, 1655 University Drive, Coral Springs, FL 33071, starting with a memorial tribute from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM.

Ray was born on July 22, 1948 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he grew up alongside his two sisters Joanne and Mary Frances. As a teen, he worked at his uncle’s butcher shop delivering groceries on his bike. In 1966, he graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School and worked briefly at Western Electric before enlisting in the United States Marine Corps in 1967.

During his six years in the Marines, Ray learned skills which would later serve him in his career and in his lifelong hobbies. He learned electronics, worked on helicopter electronic systems, and eventually taught as a Senior Senior Instructor at 29 Palms Communications Electronics School. He was a skilled sharpshooter who taught marksmanship. Prior to being honorably discharged in 1973 at the rank of Sergeant, he had also earned a National Defense Service Medal.

After serving in the United States Marines, Ray used his electronics experience to become one of the first Layout Design Engineers in the country, working at Intel, Cray Research, and Motorola before retiring in 2014. At the time of his retirement, he was a Senior PC Board Layout Designer. While he had stints as a manager, he preferred to work on designs rather than manage people. In 1990 at Cray Research, he was awarded the Innovation Award for design of the diffusion set for the RAM array on the CRAY Y-MP16, one of the supercomputers CRAY was famous for.

A fun fact about Ray is that he earned the nickname “Gator Ray” because of his design work on “gate arrays,” long before he lived in Florida and became the father of a University of Florida Gator.

While in the Marines, Ray married his first wife Pamela, and together they had sons Timothy J. Conrad and Christopher Conrad. Later, he married his second wife Mary, and together they had son Adam W. Conrad.

Ray lived in South Florida for 27 years, where he loved to fish, shoot trap, and craft paracord bracelets, crosses, and keychains to give to his friends. Before his knees got the best of him, he also loved to play tennis and golf. He was an avid reader of mysteries and thrillers, with bookshelves filled to the brim with his favorites, the vast majority of which he had actually finished reading! He was kind and generous with those he loved, always game to do a favor, and gregarious and quick with a joke, even with those he had just met. On the fishing boat, he told certain jokes so often that the regulars and crew had his jokes numbered and he could just say “Number 4!” to get a laugh. Though he could be headstrong and stubborn, he had a great sense of humor, and never wore long pants.

He was the son of the late Raymond R. Conrad Jr and Fortunata “Fay” (Angelo) Conrad; father of Adam Conrad of Brooklyn, NY, Timothy J. Conrad, and Christopher Conrad; brother of Joanne Conrad of Elizabeth, NJ and Mary Frances Conrad, of Manchester, NJ; he is also survived by other loving family members and friends.

After the memorial, Ray will be interred at Finn's Point National Cemetery in Pennsville, NJ at a later date.

Ray’s family would like to thank the staff of the Bruce W. Carter VA Medical Center Oncology Department in Miami, FL, specifically Dr. Maria H. Restrepo, for their compassionate treatment, as well as the ER and ICU staff of Broward Health Coral Springs, especially Dr. Rojas and the nursing staff, for their care in the days before Ray’s passing. They would also like to thank Dottie, Karen, and Gary for their friendship and care for Ray.

In lieu of flowers, please send donations to a cancer or veteran’s charity of your choice in Ray’s name.