Ray Gill, co-owner of KenRay Models, passed away on December 29th, 2008, after an extended illness.

How do you put into words how exceptional a person Ray was if you never had the opportunity to know him? How can a few paragraphs give you an idea of how loved and respected a man can be? It is hard to put into words how Ray touched all of the lives around him, but it is easy to feel the void that his passing has left.

I first met Ray in 1994 at a local hobby shop. I was getting back in to model building at that time and my two sons were approaching the age where they could build simple kits with a little guidance. The shop had a "learn to model" class in the evenings for young people and my boys wanted to participate. Ray was one of a group of local modelers who volunteered their time to help kids learn the basics. It didn't take long to for me strike up a friendship with them all, and to be invited to join the local IPMS chapter, the Shenango Valley Area Scale Modelers and to participate in the weekly modeling/bull sessions.

It was during this time that I began to notice a couple of things about Ray. First, was his sense of humor. Ray always had a smile on his face and a story to tell. Of something that happened on the way to or from or at a model show. Or of something that happened while he was working the local steel mill. Or when he was in the Marines. Or in high school. I can't remember a time that we were ever together that he didn't tell at least one story, and very rarely did he tell the same one twice.

The second thing I noticed was that he was an exceptional modeler. Ray had won national awards in many different categories by this time, among them figure painting and scratch building World War I armor. He was rarely content to build something straight out of the box, but would instead find ways to make a model more detailed or more accurate. More than once he told me of buying a model kit only to discover that the only decent pieces in it were the instructions and the decals, and he had scratch built the majority of it because he wasn't satisfied with the parts that the kit contained.

The most important thing I learned about Ray was how much he loved his family. He cherished his wife, Donna. On cold winter nights when she had to work midnight shift as a nurse at a local hospital, Ray would get up 30 minutes before her shift ended and drive to the hospital. He'd clean all of the snow off the windows and start her car so that it would be warm when it was time for her to come home. He loved to tell stories of when his daughters, Jenny and Raeann, were growing up. And his world revolved around his grandchildren, Alex and Anna.

Ray also donated his time at a local youth inline hockey facility, coaching high school kids in a recreational league along with my wife. He loved working with the kids, teaching them that they were stronger as a team than they were as individuals. But his sense of humor was always lurking just below the surface. One season, there was a referee that looked for any opportunity to eject a coach during a game. My wife had gotten thrown out of a few games for arguing calls with him when Ray hit upon the idea of bringing a towel for her to drape around her neck, a la Jerry Tarkanian. When things started getting hot, he would nudge her and point to his mouth, indicating that it was time for her to chew on the towel and not risk incuring the wrath of the referee.

After he retired from Sawhill Tubular Products in 1993, Ray began a second career as a manufacturer of model parts for many small model companies. Every morning he would fill his thermos with coffee and head out to the shop in his garage. He'd work until the coffee was gone or until it was Noon, which ever came first. He'd spend his mornings casting parts in pewter or resin, making molds, or working on masters for a new project. Rarely did he take a morning off, or not have something to do.

Ray also collaborated with some of the members of SVASM to cast parts for all kinds of kits. In 2005, Ray approached me about starting a business to make model trains in N Scale. I had gone back to my true hobby of model railroading, and often brought my current projects to model club meetings. I was building flatcars with World War II vehicle loads for my home layout at this time and Ray was intrigued by them. That's when KenRay Models was formed.

Working with Ray taught me some important things about life, things that you know but don't KNOW until you experience them. Your goals are only as high as you set them. You can accomplish great things with hard work. Learn from your mistakes, successful people learn not to repeat them. Failure is only temporary. So is success. One of Ray's favorite sayings was "Set your goals low, achieve them early and rest on your laurels." But that was his tongue in check way of saying you only get from life what you put in.

I consider myself privileged to have had the opportunity to know Ray and to work with him to build KenRay Models. He was a good friend and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about him. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him.