[Magdalen] Prayers & prayer pats requested: Ray Cole, myself (long)

cady soukup cadyasoukup at gmail.com
Tue Jan 31 23:51:52 UTC 2017


A very good friend died last Thursday, Ray Cole. A caver, husband,
father, electrical engineer, photographer, and just a wonderful guy. A
great loss. His wife is of diminished capacity - I hope she is well
cared for.

I found out yesterday that I am walking around in atrial fibrillation
all the time now, likely a result of the pulmonary embolism episode.
The (first?) procedure to attempt to correct it will be Feb 4 - a long
time away!

 hope to go to Rays funeral on Friday, and tomorrow night is our
church's celebration of a new ministry for our new rector H. Miller
Hunter.

Thanks - Cady

Below is what I wrote to Ray's son Mike Cole to give you a flavor of
our friendship:

Your father was a wonderful man, he certainly gave you a lot of tools
for living life well!

I've known Ray since 1972, when I moved into the DC area to attend
graduate school at University of Maryland in marine biology. Ray (and
Paul Stevens) "adopted" me as a project caver (after I showed up twice
on an Organ Cave project weekend and proved to be an experienced caver
& not afraid of caving with the likes of Mike Dyas and 15 other men).
I spent a lot of time in Organ Cave in the early-to-mid 1970's with
Ray and Paul. I think it was the whitewater trip taken with Diana
Northup and Bob Willskey, during which Bob Willskey died in an
accident (and trying to mentor Keith Conover's enthusiasm for all
things outdoors and medical!), that started Ray's interest in setting
up a mid-atlantic search and rescue group.

In the 1980's, after a time in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins, I ended up
back in the DC area again, and did more caving, mostly with Roberta
Swicegood. At that time I became interested in the search and rescue
group that Ray, Keith Conover, and Gene Harrison started. I joined the
Shenandoah Mountain Rescue Group (SMRG), one of the Appalachian Search
and Rescue Groups (ASRC) and, with the vertical training/experience
from caving ended up doing almost as much search and rescue (training
and missions) as I was going caving. We had an amazing technical
rescue from Old Rag Mountain (I now have lived about 5 miles east of
the mountain for over 25 years) that included the radios and
communications Ray had worked hard to obtain and maintain. By that
time, you were born, and Ray wasn't as active on field missions as he
had been earlier.

Then, in 2001, I volunteered to assist with the National Speleological
Society Photo Salon, then a competition for cave photography film
slides. Paul Stevens had been handling it with his wife Lee Stevens
for several years. Talking to Paul, I wasn't sure at all if my offer
was attractive, but he said he would get back to me (typical Paul!).
He did get back to me with a counter offer - Ray Cole would be
principle and I would assist him. Good enough! Ray and I started
handling the annual NSS Photo Salon and, in 2006, the entire Salon
Awards Show. Ray's expertise with radios (stage communications), stage
craft (all sorts of behind-the-scenes gizmos to make everything work),
and photography were key elements of the show. We were all sad when he
"retired" from his position in 2012.

For the Photo Salon, Ray worked hard on the transition between all
film slides to all digital photographs, starting in 2006 and now
complete. Ray provided in-depth expert and kind photographic critiques
to new cave photographers, had an enormous group of photographers that
he kept in touch with who he would cajole into entering every year,
and was respected at every level of photography, caving, electronics,
and living.

There are so few people as kind, honorable, knowledgeable, all about
follow-through, and experienced as Ray. It is with a very heavy heart
that I say good bye to him.


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