When I painted his picture, I wanted to remember him characteristically under the wing of a brand new airplane. One of his students bought this new Cessna 172, and for insurance purposes, needed a ten hour checkout. Ray was working for ARCO then and his boss was a pilot, and his boss's boss was a pilot. They agreed he could take a Friday and make up the time later.
Ray flew us across the country from California to Ohio or Illinois twice for a long vacation. One time, we hit a wall of weather on our way home. I had to call my boss and tell him that I was stranded in Missouri. He chuckled and asked how many times did I think he heard that. Anyway, then he just told me to get home safely.
If Ray was under stress at work, sometimes he would fly us to an inn up in the high desert town of Apple Valley. Just an overnight stay on Saturday would feel like we had a vacation because it was so relaxing.
In 2001, Ray had his first stroke. Life changed for both of us. We came to Florida to visit Ray's brother and go to Sun n' Fun. While we were here, we saw that prices of houses were one-third of what they were in California. Our house was on the sales market for one week and sold. Ray got on the internet and found us a house in Winter Haven. Ray put all his radio controlled model airplanes in the bed of our new pickup truck, we loaded our dog and two cats in the back seat and drive across on highway 10 to Winter Haven. We only made one stopover to see our friend, Mike Matthews, who took us to see the Grand Canyon. Good times were short lived. Ray had another massive stroke in 2008. It was the beginning of his declining years. He kept his sense of humor to the very end.
Raymond is survived by his wife Sandra in Winter Haven, his sister, Jean Crew of LaSalle, Illinois, and his brother, Ronald Henry of Waverly, Florida.
SHARE OBITUARY
v.1.8.18