CLINTON — Raymond Edward Moss was born on March 23, 1932, in Washington, Pa. He passed away peacefully at home on August 9, 2024.
In 1927, Ray’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Conaway, married Arthur Raymond Moss in Emden, Ill., before they moved to the hills of Western Pennsylvania. It was a hardscrabble life; Ray remembered the sound of the wind whistling through the cracks in the shack where he was raised.
When he was five, Arthur died of rheumatic fever, and not long after, Ray and his mother moved back to Illinois. Over the next few years, he worked on a farm in the summers, lived for a time with his beloved aunt, Minne Dever, and finally moved to Clinton, in 1947, when his mother married Dwight Farnsworth.
Always popular with his peers, Ray was voted senior class president and graduated from Clinton Community High School, in 1950.
That fall, he attended Illinois State University. He married his first wife, Virginia Alice Adams, in December of 1951, and completed the academic year at ISU before enlisting in the U.S. Army. He was sent to Fort Riley, Kan., for basic training.
Ray was admitted to Officer Candidate School, and in the spring of 1953, left Kansas for Fort Benning, Ga. He remembered stopping at Lookout Mountain, in Tennessee, along the way, and it was there that he began not feeling well. By the time they arrived in Georgia, he was seriously ill with what would be diagnosed as rheumatic fever, the same disease that had claimed his father.
Ray spent nine months in the military hospital recuperating. After a medical discharge, he returned home, finished his degree at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, and in short order, he and Virgina started a family. David Michael was born in 1954. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree, Ray began law school at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, and during that time, Timothy Edward was born in 1958.
As a newly minted lawyer in 1959, he was hired by a hometown law firm, Herrick and Rudasill, and was elected state’s attorney in 1960. Ray and Virginia’s youngest son, Thomas Paul, was born in 1964.
Ray was also an entrepreneur, opening the popular Open Hearth Restaurant as well as other ventures through the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1984 Ray established his own law firm, Ray Moss and Associates, focusing on civil litigation and jury trials. He truly loved practicing law, which he would do for 66 years until formally retiring in 2024.
Ray married his second wife, Anna Marie Dial in 1979. They were avid travelers and golfers. A favorite golfing destination was Biloxi, Miss., where they returned several times together and with friends. Ray and Ann also spent many happy days in the mountains and valleys of Colorado.
They were fixtures at the Clinton Country Club, and in fact Ray was quite proud in his later years to have been the oldest continuous member. Every Thursday afternoon, he could be found on the golf course or around a euchre table there.
Ray was an avid hunter and outdoorsman, and especially enjoyed annual deer hunting trips to Southern Illinois. He accumulated countless dear friends through the years.
He is survived by his sons and their wives, David and Margaret, Timothy and Alice, and Thomas and Tina Dorow; He is also survived by his stepson’s partner, Joelle Schnierle; three grandchildren, Christopher Moss, Aleksandra Moss, and John Moss; one great granddaughter, Thea Moss; and cousin William Dever.
Preceding him in death were his first wife, Virginia Middaugh; second wife, Anna Moss, his stepson, Ronald Taylor; stepbrother Harry Farnsworth; and cousin Don Dever.
Services will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, August 16, 2024, at Calvert Funeral Home, in Clinton. Interment will follow at Texas Township Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, Ray requested that donations be made to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, or Home Sweet Home Ministries.
Online condolences may be made at www.calvertmemorial.com
