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Ray Discusses Water Skiing (Play Audio)
Ray: We lived on a
lake so I was an avid water skier and skied for Florida’s Cypress
Gardens, which was a very active tourist center at that time. They
maintained a very active competitive professional tournament team and I
was a member of that team. So I did a lot of water skiing in my early
teenage years. And when I came to Rollins I actually had a small
scholarship from the Kiekhaefer Mercury Marine Outboard Motors that I
had won because of winning a national tournament, and Rollins had a ski
team and so Rollins was one of my favorite picks of somewhere to come.
And I had by that time retired from professional skiing but continued to
ski for the Rollins team during the three years I was here. I actually
went through the undergraduate program here in three years instead of
four. I ended up going to summer school a couple of summers and taking
overloads; and so, I skied for the Rollins ski team for those three
years.
Ray Discusses Moving the Psychology Department into Bush Science Center (Play Audio) Ray: And so, I also noted that we had–by that time–live animal research facilities, we had a colony room that housed both rats and dogs and occasionally mice. And that it made a lot more sense to me if we could take advantage of some unused space behind the Bush Science Center to build a psychology building and remove psychology–physically at least–from the social science complex, which would relieve essentially a whole floor requirement. And there was enough of a footprint available behind Bush inside of the L to put at least a two story building. And so, we ultimately put the laboratory upstairs because it articulated with biology who could then share our animal facilities because they also occasionally had live animals. And so we consolidated into one colony and put our laboratories in the second floor and built an office complex on the first floor. So it evolved as a way of taking advantage of some not very usable footprint space behind Bush anyway. There was nothing but a loading dock and trying to keep the footprint of the social science building to a much more reasonable size.
Ray Discusses Hugh McKean (Play Audio) Ray: I remember a good story about Hugh. I had a friend that was living in the same dorm and he was taking an art class from Hugh McKean and it was an eight o’ clock class and he missed one, one time and Hugh came and knocked on his door and got him out of bed to get him to come to class. He had gone to class, found that he was missing, came to the dorm, got him out of bed, and he brought him to class. (laughs) Not sure the president would do that anymore. (laughs) I’m not sure he missed very many eight o’ clock classes after that either. (laughs)
Ray Discusses How the Area Has Changed (Play Audio) Ray: One of the most memorable tales that I tell about change physically in the environment is that I used to commute on weekends back to Winter Haven. My wife and I were dating at that time. I would go home and spend weekends there. I had to come up through Kissimmee and 17-92, 441 to come to Rollins from Winter Haven. I-4 was under construction and I have actually driven I-4 from downtown Orlando to US 27 and never passed an automobile. Because it was under construction when it first opened, you could make a trip and never pass a car. (laughs) Now you can’t drive twenty feet and not pass thirty cars. (laughs) So I’ve seen a lot of changes in terms of the physical environment.
Ray Discusses Projects and Publications (Play Audio) Ray: And yet that, winter term in the Bahamas, winter term on killer whales, we even did a research project once at Daytona 24 Hour Grand Prix and it was measuring heart rate of race car drivers. I mean, it just–opportunities just come up and you don’t have to justify to anybody that you decided not to publish that one, or you took four years to publish this one, or–I couldn’t have the kind of publication career and because of that I’ve published some things that it would be very, very difficult for other people to publish, because they couldn’t do it. They wouldn’t have the luxury. When you are under publish or perish circumstances in large research institutions timing is everything, and here that’s not been the critical factor. I’ve averaged probably (thud) you know, at least a publication a year for the forty some odd years I’ve been here but, I’ve never felt the pressure to get that out. So it’s been unique. |
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