Richard A. Ray ’58

Richard A. Ray ’58, Ph.D., died on April 10 in North Carolina. Dick was born in New Orleans and graduated from high school in Atlanta. At Dartmouth he majored in philosophy and was active in Young Democrats and The Dartmouth. During his college summers he was a lifeguard at Lake Susan in North Carolina. He attended Princeton Seminary for a year; graduated from Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia; and then completed a Ph.D. in theology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Dick served as pastor of Presbyterian churches in Arkansas, Virginia, and Tennessee and was a professor of religion at Stevens College, King University, and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He was also editor of the John Knox Press, a Presbyterian publishing firm, and later was president of King University, where he served on the board of trustees for 40 years. In his 50th reunion book he reminisced about Dartmouth: “Here one encountered professors in whose minds creative questions and ideas were on fire. A single idea was a generative spark. And in my simple, immature way, I somehow became the tinder into which those sparks fell.” Dick’s wife, Lila, survives him, along with three children and eight grandchildren.