Raymond Moore Willey

Raymond was born in Chicago, IL to Raymond Willey Sr. and Irene Willey. He grew up with his brother Derald and sister Patricia. As a teen, he loved spending his time playing sports and hanging out with his friends and teammates. He was the varsity football center on the Kelly High School team in Chicago and played football with a number of friends who he stayed connected with over the years. In his Junior year at Kelly High School he met his lifelong partner and wife, Marie, who attended Lourdes High School. They met at Jack & Jill’s Ice Cream Parlor in Chicago and eventually fell in love. Within two years they married and started a family, complete with their first child Sandra Anne then 4 years later with Michael Raymond. Raymond and Marie remained married for 72 years until his passing.

Immediately after graduation from Kelly High, he entered the Marine Reserves. At 21, he proudly became an officer in the Chicago Police Department. Over the 25 years that Raymond was on Chicago Police force, he had a variety of positions…uniform police officer, plain clothes detective, and arson and bomb-squad technician. Following his retirement from the Chicago Police Department at age 55, Raymond and Marie moved to Colorado in the early 1980’s, where both their daughter and son’s families had recently moved, and they first lived in Redstone and then Battlement Mesa. Raymond joined the Garfield County Sheriff’s Department shortly after moving to Colorado and served as a sheriff’s deputy until he was 70. After that, for several years he served with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and then following the terrorist attack on 9/11 helped to train the TSA in bomb preparedness. He finally retired when he was 74, but didn’t slow down and became an avid golfer where he got on the course most days of the week with a tight group of friends who golfed with him and were special. Raymond got onto the course right up until the last few weeks before he passed away.

Raymond and Marie and the family were always on the move, being active and doing things. As a family they loved to get together with the families of their close and lifelong friends and relatives in the Chicago area. Getting outdoors and taking car vacations were some of their favorite things. Trips to Daytona Beach, Chetek WI, and many more were family highlights. Over the years, he bought many cool cars, rotating them out so fast that they never had rust before he bought the next one. The family had the best dogs, Tootsie the rat terrier, Nasha the Samoyed who was the best dog ever on earth, Shantu who was a pistol, and Maddie a cocker spaniel who was the sweetest doggie you’ve ever seen…run Maddie run. He had fun and lived life to the fullest. Raymond was remembered at telling good stories and was good at playing cards with family friends along with board games like Risk and Formula 1 with select family members. He had a sense of humor that other people with good sense of humor “got” immediately…others took awhile and most eventually got it. He was a good, strong and dependable father, along with being a godfather to others, which was of the utmost importance to Raymond. He instilled in family members and those that chose to listen the qualities of honor, integrity, competitiveness, inner strength, and love of the greatest country on earth. He was an immensely strong guy, mentally and physically that protected and loved his family.

Raymond is survived by his wife Marie and his children Sandra and her husband Tim Borus, and Michael and their families. He had four grandchildren, Patrick Borus, Ryan Borus, Christopher Willey and Kevin Willey. Raymond had 5 great grandchildren, Taylor, Allie, Reid, Grant, and Collette.

Love you more than that!

(There will be no service at Raymond’s request.)