Obituary: Raymond Terry, Bay Shore Native, Dies At 84

BAY SHORE, NY — Raymond Joseph Terry, a Bay Shore native, died peacefully on Friday, Sept 25 at the Able Plus Assisted Living Facility in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was 84.

Ray was born on August 6, 1936, in Bay Shore as the only child of Francis Hallock Terry and Mildred Elizabeth (Meyer) (Terry) Knowles. His father died from scarlet fever in 1939, just a few years before the development of antibiotics, so Ray grew up with his mother, grandmother, and dog, Poochie, who followed him to school each day.

He graduated from Bay Shore High School in 1953 and then attended the Holderness prep school in New Hampshire. He enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia but left early to join the Navy in March 1956.

Serving aboard the aircraft carriers USS Hancock and USS Ranger in the Pacific through January 1960, Ray received training in electronics and telecommunications. In June 1963, while living in Hawaii, he became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and remained one until November 2015. At church, he met Betty Glendora Davis and the two got married on December 7, 1963.

The following year, the couple moved to Prince George’s County, Maryland to be closer to their parents, as they became parents themselves. Ray then continued his education at the University of Maryland in College Park, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology, making Phi Beta Kappa, and coming just shy of earning a Ph.D. He used his earlier training from the Navy to work as an electronics technician at AT&T for 35 years until his retirement in 1995.

The couple raised five children and cared for their parents. In retirement, they served a church mission at the LDS Business College in Salt Lake City with their son, David, and then moved back to Hawaii part-time, reliving their early married life. Ray, Betty, and David were like the three musketeers until Betty’s death in 2011.

Ray also had a passion for genealogy, researching both his own family history and Betty’s. In the 1990s, he created the website Mitsawokett.com, an extensive record of Betty’s mixed-race heritage and the tri-racial communities of the mid-Atlantic region. The website has become a valuable resource for researchers.

According to his family, Ray was loved and will be remembered for his humor, intellect, and readiness to serve others, as well as for his year-round preference for Hawai’ian shirts and open-toed Birkenstock sandals, an enduring puzzlement to his East Coast friends. He was also a passionate and proud supporter of civil rights.

He is survived by his children, Elizabeth Geneva Terry and her husband Michael Stoler, William Wilson Terry and his wife Lilly Terry, Frances Mildred (Terry) Meyerson and her husband George Meyerson, Ellen Margaretha (Terry) Holder and her husband Jess Holder, and David Joseph Terry, as well as twelve grandchildren, Zachary, Aaron, Seth, Thomas, Meghan, Rachel, Kiera, Lauren, Michael, Abby, David, and Quinn.

In addition, he is also survived by his first cousins Cornelia “Connie” Clinton Terry Ferguson and Marjorie “Punky” Meyer Palmer.

A virtual memorial service will take place on Sunday starting at 5 p.m. For updates, email the family at rjtmemorial@gmail.com.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks to make a donation to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (https://action.aclu.org/give/make-gift-aclu-someones-memory) or the Southern Poverty Law Center (https://donate.splcenter.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=1367).