We sent out the normal amount of holiday cards this past Christmas season and received two letters back in mid-January informing us of the deaths of an old friend of the family from St. Louis, and a good neighbor that we met in 1990 when we bought a house in Towson, Maryland.
The first letter came from the wife of Ray K., a dear friend of my parents and a person who was always extremely nice to me, even when I was dating his daughter. My father had a scrapbook of his soccer days, when he and Ray K. played for a semi-pro team called the Zephyr Furs in St. Louis. Ray K. and my father were the stars of that team, leading them to a national championship game (they lost) sometime in the late 40s. Our families did a lot of things with their family every year – parties, barbeques, baseball games, corkball tournaments, soccer, etc. He was great to be around. I was always impressed that there was nothing broken in his house for more than an hour; he would fix whatever was broken almost immediately. The house and lawn were immaculate. He will be missed.
The other letter came from the daughter of our neighbor Ray Z.
We met Ray Z. when we bought a house in 1990. At the time he was in his mid-70s. His wife had passed away 20 years prior, and he spoke of her often and how much he missed her. He was a retired electrical engineer, and kept himself busy taking apart electronics and drawing out the wiring/electrical schematics, then using parts and pieces to make new electronics.
I could write a book about Ray; he had a full life. He joined the Coast Guard right before WWII. He said it wasn’t all bad – spent a lot of time aboard an ice breaker in the Artic, freezing his “behind” off, then was stationed as a radio operator on some islands off the coast of Portugal. After leaving the Coast Guard, he joined Pan American World Airways as a radio operator and navigator aboard some of their transatlantic flights. He had enjoyed his stays on the islands, and spent a lot of time there for Pan Am as a radio operator. These islands became refueling points for airplanes flying overseas during the early days of transatlantic flights. He told many harrowing stories about how dangerous these flights were- crash landing a plane, being lost over the Atlantic during a storm and coming out of the storm and getting his bearings by the stars, only to get to the islands and coasting in after running out of fuel. He was there in the early days of Pan Am, and was very proud of his accomplishments.
But his favorite experiences involved his bachelor days on the islands. He had the privilege of squiring many actresses and singers and entertainers who were traveling across the Atlantic. Many times they were stranded for a day or two on the islands for airplane maintenance or weather problems. As he told it, he was the only man stationed there that could dance, and he had a ’swell time with the broads’. Among those he danced with were Carole Lombard, Frances Farmer, Kay Francis, and Carole Landis.
After another near-disastrous flight, he left Pan Am, met his future wife, and settled down. He was so enthralled with early televisions, he used his electronics knowledge and opened a TV repair business. He also sold DuMont televisions, an early leader in the industry. They were fraught with problems, so he was very busy repairing them.
He spent a good amount of time in his home workshop inventing electronic gadgets, but never patented anything, and told me many times how he regretted it. He devised his own house alarm system in the late 1940s, which was still in use on his house. He built a radio controlled airplane in the 1950s. He played golf well into his 80’s, and taught his grandsons how to play. He also made his own golf clubs, researching parts and materials, doing experiments with weights, balancing, epoxies, leather handgrips, and metal shafts.
He built a device to steal the scrambled cable channels, then shimmied up a telephone pole to install the device. He then decoded the channels so he could get HBO, Cinemax, the Playboy Channel, you name it. He didn’t care about watching these shows; it was all about the challenge. The cable company figured out that someone in our block was stealing the cable signal, so they sent a truck to our street to check it out. This happened about 10 times. The technician left all 10 times emptyhanded. It turns out Ray knew what they were up to, and devised some sort of gizmo to send an interfering signal so the truck’s electronics could not pick up much of anything.
Finally the technician zeroed in on Ray’s house, and knocked on his door. He sort of accused Ray of climbing the telephone pole and altering the equipment. Ray’s reply – “Good God, young man, I’m 82 years old!” The technician left and Ray told me he had a good laugh.
I once ran across some oversized graph paper at an auction, and gave Ray all 10 pads. He was more than thrilled, as he didn’t have to tape together regular sized papers anymore to draw out his increasingly complicated schematics. This and any gifts of broken down electronics would always come with an offer to sit down and have a beer with Ray, and listen to more great tales.
Like I said, I could write a book about Ray, but I’ll stop here, smiling and remembering all the great conversations I had with him over the years. I’ll miss him.
gilmark
