- Date Of Death: November 2, 2015
- State: Arizona
Patricia Ruth Ray died on November 2, 2015 in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
Patricia was born in Purcell, Oklahoma, in 1925 to Melvin and Catherine Pierce. She was the ninth of ten children. Her father was an engineer with the Atchison-Topeka-Sante Fe Railroad. Due to this, Patricia and her brothers and sisters had a free pass to ride the trains, which they took full advantage of and had a lot of fun in the process. Though Patricia’s mother died when she was young and Patricia grew up in the Great Depression, she had nothing but happy memories of her big family of brothers and sisters. As a young woman, Patricia worked as a dime store clerk and an old-style telephone operator (think Sarah on the Andy Griffith Show). When World War II came, she worked as a “Rosie-the-Riveter” in the factory supporting the war effort.
When the war ended, Patricia fell in love with one of the returning vets, Floyd “Buddy” Ray. The day they met, Floyd actually already had a date planned for that night and asked if he could take Patricia out on another night. She said it was now or never, and Floyd cancelled the other date and took Patricia out – and never looked back. On October 26, 1946, they were married in a small ceremony in Oklahoma City.
Patricia helped put Floyd through the petroleum engineering program at the University of Oklahoma, where he attended on the GI Bill. Their first son, Jimmy, was born while Floyd was in school, and their first daughter, Peggy, was born the day he graduated. Five more children would be born to Patricia and Floyd-Bonnie, Patrick, Bill, Mary, and Jennifer-all of whom were still alive at her passing, for which she was extremely grateful.
When Floyd went to work for the Shell Oil Company, the growing family moved many times over the next few years, making stops in (among other places) Ardmore, Oklahoma; Houston, Texas; Great Bend, Kansas; Albuquerque and Farmington, New Mexico; Denver, Colorado; and finally in Paradise Valley, Arizona. Floyd worked for Shell for a number of years before going into the oil business for himself, eventually founding Famcor Oil Company, which became very prosperous. Floyd passed away in 1996, just a few months before their 50th Wedding Anniversary.
