Raymond Wagstaffe

1957 - 2020

Raymond J. Wagstaffe

September 9, 1957-March 10, 2020

Ray Wagstaffe, a magnificent husband, father, brother, friend and colleague, passed away peacefully with his wife Jacqueline near his side on March 10, 2020 in Solvang. He stared down many health struggles including diabetes and kidney cancer.

Ray was born in Redwood City, California in 1957 to parents Gerard and Jean Wagstaffe. He grew up in Menlo Park.

After dazzling the nuns at St. Raymond's School, Ray attended Bellarmine College Prep (Class of 1975), where he was Student Body Vice President, excelled in baseball, was a State Finalist in Dramatic Interpretation and played the lead in several plays. He graduated from Santa Clara University in 1979 where he led the Debate team and earned a B.S. degree in Finance.

What a career. It started in college where, as Ray would say, he was a "Chef for Applause" at Sandy's Kitchen in the Stanford Shopping Center. And if you took his word for it, he was even accepted to the Le Cordon Bleu cooking academy in Paris.

Ray started his successful business career as a V.P. and later the youngest Branch Manager in the company's history at Crocker Bank in Palo Alto. With an entrepreneurial spirit that never left him, Ray was wooed from the bank to more southern parts of California (San Diego and Santa Barbara) where he served as CFO for three high-tech companies: Network Solutions, Inc., Xcelerated Systems and Andataco.

The challenge of international sales called and Ray joined Texas Instruments, where he had a long, successful career from 1993-2020. He served in many capacities, including as Global Strategic Corporate Account Manager, and most recently as Worldwide Operations Manager where he led the Apple Account team, covering the sale of chips to Apple for the entire market in China. Ray had many, many valued colleagues and friends at TI.

Ray was a lifelong storyteller, with magnified humor and content. Ray hit a 500-foot home run in Little League at La Entrada field, caught fish with no bait, jumped off a moving train (this was only possibly an accident), was the Commissioner of and frequently won his annual fantasy football pool, parasailed at extraordinary heights in Tahoe, and experienced Matt Cain's perfect game pitching for Ray's beloved Giants. Most of this is true.

He was a terrific golfer (Club Champion at the Alisal Golf Resort and stroked three -- count them, three -- hole-in-ones). On the other hand and by his own admission, Ray was terrible in putting on tire chains in the snow.

His family—wife Jacqueline, children Christina (Jeff), Christopher (Elaine), Daniel, David (Kasey), and Thomas, grandkids Jacob and Liliana, as well as, among others, brothers Steve (Sue), Jim (Karen), multiple in-laws, aunts, nephews, nieces, cousins, and countless friends—will deeply miss Ray and his amazing stories.

A memorial for family and friends will be scheduled when world circumstances allow in the hopefully not-too-distant future at his beloved golf course at Alisal Ranch. Donations may be made to a charity of your choice or to the American Diabetes Association, to fight the disease that contributed to what took him away from us.