At the time Ray’s mother died, James, the oldest, had married and moved out. Ray had also quit school to work and help his mother and little sister. When Lou died, James and Ruby–his first wife-moved back to the farm.
By this time Ray had taken a job to help pay the bills. His original Social Security card, found in his files, is dated 1938.
Ray soon graduated and worked on a highway construction job for Mississippi State Highway 63 between Pascagoula and Lucedale.
[A curious side note –That project was managed by Vaughn Gibbons who was the grandfather of Mary Lynn Gibbons, who is the wife of Tom Davis (me). It is ironic that my father worked for her grandfather.]
Soon Ray went to work for the telephone company to build and maintain telephone services in southeast Mississippi.
Then the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. That resulted in the United States’ entry into World War II and Ray went to enlist in the Army just after his 22nd birthday. His background in communications and electronics made him an asset in the evolving and deploying “radar” systems.