On Dec. 31, 2017, with great sadness to his family, Ray B. Tucker of Christiansburg and his miraculous life, passed physically and spiritually to the next steps in his journey. He is survived by his wife Yvonne, his two children Jeff and Cindy and their mother Violet, siblings Charles, Lloyd, and Lois, and grandchildren Christopher and Evelyn, who remember his always loving ways and amazing character.
Ray was born in the spring of 1934 in Idaho, the third of five children of Lowell and Gladys Tucker. Lowell and Gladys both valued education and both held advanced degrees. They raised five children who became highly educated, lifelong learners. As a young man Ray lived and worked at a diner in Oregon; however, when college and career came, like his parents, Ray chose to become a teacher.
Ray was born with a defective heart. He became one of the early/experimental patients in the pioneering days of open-heart surgery in the 1950s and left that procedure understanding that any day his heart may fail.
Ray grew up and lived many years of his life in Southern Illinois (Cobden/Carbondale, Champaign, and Centralia); and he lived in Southwestern Virginia (Roanoke, Salem, and Christiansburg) for about half of his 83-plus years.
Ray earned his bachelor’s degree from Southern Illinois University in math, and master’s degrees from both Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Education, and the University of Illinois in Math. Ray had a full career of teaching developmental math skills to high school students in Illinois, and college students at Virginia Western; and also, a life of brilliant reasoning, reading, writing, and speaking on spiritual philosophy, math, and politics.
Ray loved the outdoors, particularly hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains and Giant City, and visiting the beach. The ocean carried strong appeal to Ray, and he thought Oregon may have been the most beautiful place he had seen; however, Ray was at home in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Ray also had both a sophisticated and corny sense of humor, and loved games of all types, particularly board games both of strategy and of chance. During his later years he spent many hours playing a Ray-modified (enhanced) version of 5-in-a-row, Chinese checkers and backgammon with his family. Ray taught young people to play checkers and chess. Ray was a table tennis champion when he was in school, and became the most thoughtfully sound reasoning person his son has ever met.
Ray and Yvonne traveled to Britain and throughout the United States, visiting art galleries and spiritual institutions. They hiked in mountains, and walked by rivers and the ocean. Recently, they took art classes together where Ray created his whimsical creations.
Ray was an avid designer, builder, and modifier of new and old houses having completed and lived in three houses he created from scratch, and repaired countless homes for himself and others. There seemed nothing Ray couldn’t fix.
Late in his life the doctors he encountered, including his cardiology doctors at Duke, considered Ray to be a miracle given his health and longevity with his highly irregular and amazingly adapted heart. Truly, what everyone who knew Ray understood is that it was his gentle, loving heart that made him most special.
There will be a private ceremony scheduled at a later date. In lieu of flowers, please consider donations to the American Heart Association or your favorite social charity.
The Tucker family is in the care of Mullins Funeral Home & Crematory in Radford.
