Ray Troxell

TROXELL Mr. Ray Troxell died Friday, May 18, 2007. Born in Springfield, Ill., on April 30, 1928, to the late Lyman Ray and Signe Svenson Troxell, Ray knew from the sixth grade that he would become an architect. He graduated from Springfield High School in 1945 where he played both football and basketball. He was a member of the editorial staff of the high school newspaper and president of his senior class. He graduated with honors from the University of Illinois in 1950 with a B.S. in architecture where he was a student lab instructor for several years. In 1949, Ray was one of two recipients of the Allerton Scholarship Award. Accounting their travels, they wrote The Allerton Scholarship Report 1949: On Architecture American and Colonial as It Is and Places and People as they areand might have been. His senior year, he was the president of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity. He was licensed as an architect at the age of 22, having already fulfilled the two-year internship requirement. Much of the following is culled from a profile about Ray included in the book Guide to North Carolina Wineries. He told the authors, "It is very flattering; I may use it for my obituary." Ray served in the Air Force during the Korean War as an air installations officer helping to plan for immediate needs of air force bases and their future growth. Shortly after discharge in 1953, he took a job in Washington as a general contractor because he thought, "as an architect, it would be a fantastic experience," a first-hand experience in learning about the construction industry. In D.C., Ray had one particularly memorable job: one of his projects was to remodel a four-story building in the middle of a mountain. Everyone there had to have special clearances. He said, "If you wanted to go to the bathroom, you could, but there was a guy with a machine gun behind you all the way; as you went down the corridors you could not look left or right." He remembers, "Nobody could know where the entrance was until one day years later, I opened up the US News and World Report and there was a picture of the damn entrance." Eventually, Ray moved to Winston-Salem to work for Larson & Larson Architects where he worked on plans for the building of the Wake Forest Campus. In 1962, he established his own firm which specialized in health care facilities and retirement centers. After retirement, he got into the design of the building of two wineries in North Carolina. In 1998, Ray was surprised to receive a phone call about the gathering of old friends to work on the first winery. He was excited by the project because he said, "It was just a great, great opportunity to learn something new." After learning the mechanics of winemaking, he began to create plans. He further said, "Outside [the facility], a wrap-around porch with rocking chairs was situated to overlook the vineyardsthe vistas and views of the land are magnificent." The result, Shelton Vineyards, he believed "turned out quite well." Ray was then commissioned to design the building for RayLen Vineyards and subsequently painted a watercolor for the RayLen label in exchange for a bottle of Chardonnay! Designing wineries was the latest phase of a 40-year career during which Ray worked on everything from nursing homes, local business buildings, churches, homes for friends, plus the secret government bunker. He was always ready to take on new projects because it was a chance to keep learning, and he said, "I do love the work." And, true to this love of the work, he was creating plans for another old friend who had called when he was recently hospitalized. Ray was still a licensed architect working several hours a day in the firm he had established in 1962. During his retirement, Ray continued his 45-year hobby as a master shipbuilder leaving an unfinished schooner, the "Bowdoin", with only the hull completed. He was a watercolorist, an avid gardener and raised Roller pigeons and Bantum chickens. In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by two sons, Bruce Troxell, a local contractor, and Dr. Marcus Troxell. Surviving are his wife, Charlotte Wilson Troxell; a daughter, Amy Troxell Walton, and husband Steve; a son, Kyle Troxell, and wife Ann and their sons, Chase and Will; Joy Mayo Troxell, the mother of Emily and Graham; Rebecca Benton Troxell, the mother of Kevin and Erin; and a brother, Richard L. Troxell, of Scottsdale, Ariz. A memorial service to celebrate his life will be conducted at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 3, at Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, 4055 Robinhood Road, Winston-Salem, with the Rev. Charles Davis officiating. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be made to Hospice and Palliative CareCenter, 101 Hospice Lane, Winston-Salem, NC 27103, or to Reynolda Gardens, 100 Reynolda Village, Winston Salem, NC 27106.