Died: November 13, 2012
Ray was born in Boston and grew up in Oconomowoc, WI. After graduating from Yale with an engineering degree, Ray joined the Peace Corps and served for two years in Iran. While in Iran, he met and married Hannelore Trochim, a German Peace Corps Volunteer.
Ray had many different interests in his life and was always ready to try something new. Early on he worked in the field of desalination — making freshwater from seawater — and spent four years in Saudi Arabia working on desalination projects. Later on, he became a software entrepreneur. In 1982 he founded Heizer General which later became Heizer Software, developing software applications for the Macintosh platform. He was a regular participant in MacWorld events in San Francisco, where he manned a booth to demonstrate his products. After selling Heizer Software in 1996, Ray founded Heizer Strategic Services, offering investigation services, from which he retired in 2005.
Ray enjoyed traveling throughout his life, including those early stints in the Near East. He and Hannelore once took a year-long trip in a travel trailer around the United States and Canada and, in 2007, hiked coast to coast across England. In 2009, Ray fulfilled a lifelong dream by hiking the Appalachian Trail.
He was able to trace three of his ancestors back to the Mayflower, and was a member of the California Mayflower Society.
Ray died on November 13, 2012 after a brave battle with brain cancer.