Jay Ray Haese, known to most people as Ray, got off to an early start to adventure, so it’s understandable that at age 92, he is content to live a quiet life with his memories in a senior citizen residence in Conroe.
Ray was born in San Antonio and grew up during the Great Depression. At the age of 16, he went to work for Zachary Construction Co., where he learned how to be a heavy equipment operator. While building runways for fighter airplane schools in Laredo, he met and married Ollie, who would be his companion for 67 years until her death in 2008.
“I went into the Army when I was 17,” Ray recalled. Actually, there was a little bit more to the story than that, explained son Barry, a Houston businessman. He pointed out that Uncle Sam deliberately recruited him. “The Army contacted construction companies looking for heavy equipment operators. Dad had experience. They didn’t care what his age was; they got him.”
Recalling the invasion, Ray said, “Well, we landed there, pitched tents, stayed about three days waiting for the weather to clear and for transportation to go to Bitche, France.” As a combat engineer, Ray’s duty was to operate a bulldozer to clear roads of debris and snow to keep supply lines open. He slept his first night in Germany in a tent. “It was cold. I left my boots outside the tent, and when I put them on the next morning, the tongues broke off, it was so cold,” he said, chuckling.
Shell Oil Co. was doing some drilling in that region of Texas, and Ray took a job with the company as a roughneck, and stayed with it for eight years, working on both land rigs and inland barges. He liked roughnecking, he said, but was ambitious to advance. “And I did. Over the next 24 years, I got to be a rig manager, and I went all over the world.”
“After the layoff, we were coming up the Mississippi River, and there was a derrick erected onto a ship that was docked in the river near New Orleans. What we were looking at was a drillship owned by Global Marine Drilling Company. The name of the drillship was Glomar IV.
So we stopped there, checking for jobs. They wanted us to go to work the next morning, me and my crew. I said, ‘No, I’m going home first, then I’ll come back in four days.’”
Ray said he and his crew returned to Global Marine in four days. That was the beginning of his 24 year career with Global Marine, “Traveling all over the world. My wife was with me every day. My wife and I loved it. You don’t see many women like that.”
During recovery operations, Ray said, the Soviets were circling the ship in small boats and helicopters. “Every day, the boats would come around, then go out about a half a mile, stay there, and then come back the next day with the helicopters to follow. “It took us a long time to lower the barge with that 16,800 ft. depth,” Ray said. “We started up with the sub, and part of it broke off. There were six bodies in it. We put them in a freezer. We had a crew change in Hawaii, and after we got off, the lead crew took it out to sea and gave the Russians a formal burial.” After the real purpose of the operation became public knowledge in 1975, the American government discontinued salvage operations. The Glomar Explorer was later sold to a private company, converted for commercial use, and in 2015 sold for scrap.
“That’s for sure,” Ray agreed.
He said he does not have anything else he especially wants to do. He enjoys visits from Barry and Bobby, another son Calvin (who lives in Houston), and a daughter Linda (who resides in The Woodlands), as well as from his six grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren, and friends.
“I enjoy life,” he said.