Ray Thomas loved people – loved to meet them, to talk to them, just be with them. And boy, did he know a lot of them, said his daughter, Susan LaRue, 63, of Farmington.
“When my husband was transferred to Whidbey Island, Wash., with the Navy, my dad helped us move out there,” Susan said. “We stopped at a McDonald’s in Montana for lunch, and I’ll be doggone if he didn’t run into a man he knew. We couldn’t believe it.”
Mr. Thomas died Nov. 22 at age 90 after a five-year battle with cancer.
He was a longtime truck driver for Wetterau and a passionate lover of bluegrass music.
He grew up in a family of six children in Blair’s Creek, a tiny community “way back in the hills” in the Ozarks of southern Missouri, his daughter said.
“He went to a tiny, one-room school in Blair’s Creek through the eighth grade,” Susan said. “I found one of his report cards, actually – he did very well in school.”
He helped around the farm for a few years, then went into the military at age 17, forgoing high school. He served as an MP with the Army in Korea in the years before the Korea War started.
“He was always very proud of his military service,” Susan said. “He loved being an MP, really enjoyed it.”
Seeing the world the Army way was a real eye-opener.
“He used to share some wild stories,” Susan said with a laugh. “Evidently those were some pretty wild times, especially among the MPs.”
Once back in the states, Mr. Thomas rekindled his friendship with young Bernice Tripp.
“He had known her for years and years,” their daughter said. “She was from Sweetwater, just across the ‘holler’ from where he lived.”
The couple married in 1949 and settled in St. Louis, where Mr. Thomas went to work as a driver for the Wetterau grocery distributor. They lost a child in the early 1950s, then welcomed Susan in 1955 and her brother, Steven, five years later.
Music was always a part of Mr. Thomas’ life.
“From the time he was big enough to pick up a guitar or a fiddle, he played,” Susan said.
He and his wife also enjoyed singing.
“We went to a little church in St. Louis called Antioch Missionary Baptist,” Susan said. “He was a Sunday school teacher and the song leader. He and my mom had a quartet with another couple there, and they sang gospel songs.
“I have such fond memories of that, of getting together every week. I played piano for them, and they’d stand around the piano and sing.”
The family liked to listen to music together, too.
“They loved the Grand Ol Opry,” Susan said. “We used to sit around the radio on whatever night it was on. That was our family thing.”
In later years, Mr. Thomas developed a love of bluegrass music, and participated in many festivals and jam sessions.
“He collected instruments, and he loved to trade and sell them,” his daughter said. “He liked to go to flea markets, looking for deals, but I think it mostly was about going to places to schmooze with people. Mom was quiet, laid back, shy – and he was just the opposite. I remember him telling me he loved to entertain people.”
The family moved to High Ridge in 1963, and Mr. Thomas fit in other hobbies around his musical activities.
“He liked to deer hunt, but he wasn’t what you’d call avid,” Susan said. “I think it was more a social thing than anything else.”
He also loved to go racketing around on a four-wheeler.
“He’d get together with family and go down to Blair’s Creek and just ride everywhere,” Susan said.
Mr. Thomas had a reputation as a joke teller and prankster.
“He loved to rile people up,” Susan said. “Then he’d walk off and say, ‘But ya know, everybody loves Raymond!’ That was his favorite expression.”
One time, the laugh was on him.
“My mom and I got a rubber copperhead and put it around the base of the toilet,” Susan said. “She came running out and told him, and he grabbed his shotgun. We stopped him in time, but he hollered at me, ‘That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done! You almost made me blow a hole in the floor!’
“After it was all over, though, he laughed.”
Mr. Thomas was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2013 and underwent 25 radiation treatments.
“He fought and fought, and hung in there,” Susan said. “The doctors said he’d be lucky to live two years, and he passed that with ease.”
He began to have trouble with a leaky heart valve, though, and after a massive heart attack, he had emergency surgery to put in a stent.
“He developed neuropathy, he couldn’t walk, he was always out of breath,” Susan said. “But he kept fighting. He had pneumonia, he had infections.
I think, at the end, he just couldn’t fight any more, and another massive heart attack took him. But, you know, until he was 85, he was hardly ever sick.”
Susan said her father will be remembered for his gregarious personality.
“He just loved people,” she said. “He loved to talk to people. He loved meeting people when he was driving, and he loved family reunions.
“Nobody lived life like my dad. He lived the fullest life of anybody I’ve known. That song, ‘My Way,’ by Sinatra – he was the embodiment of it.”
Life Story,” posted Saturdays on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.