Ray Winn has taken his leave at the tender age of 91. Yes — in the lamplit evening of his long day, Ray may have presented to the casual observer as a reserved and reticent older gentleman with a kindly smile. We respectfully ask that you not buy into this ruse. Ray Winn’s hypersonic jitterbug from birth to curtain was not a “journey” but a frantic warp-speed rocket ride seasoned with surprises, joys, summits, epiphanies, and revelatory loves like an ongoing shower of sparks.
Ray and his partner Peter Kavoian were known for the magnetic fundraisers they mounted in their residence for Santa Barbara’s indefatigable nonprofits, including the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, CALM, Music Academy of the West, the American Heart Association, Cottage Hospital, Pacific Pride, Catholic Charities, and a host of others — reflexive giving surely catalyzed by Ray’s own experiences.
Ray was born in austere circumstances in coal-mining town Price, Utah. The year was 1934. Before long, his loving and beleaguered single mom relocated Ray and his remaining brothers to Las Vegas, Nevada; at that time, it was a questionable desert oasis of some 8,200 souls.
From very early on, Ray was curious and observant. Kitchen appliances drew their mysterious power from stylized holes. How? When at 5years old Ray exactingly inserted a butter knife into a wall socket seemingly devised to receive it, the jolt lofted the kid across the room and a die was cast. Ray’s grandmother, unnerved by the incident, bought him a little tool set as one gifts a pacifier to a wailing baby. As a calming device, the toddler toolbox would prove a monumental misstep.
At Las Vegas High School (LVHS), Ray’s teachers often struggled to keep up with the quiet kid’s scholarly mettle. Meanwhile, in the LVHS band room, he met and fell for a young lady whose wit, grit, and IQ mirrored his own — a fellow musician named Lorraine Cass. Ray and Lorraine would later marry and raise three busily unique argonauts of their own: Paul, Kevin, and Lisa — their kids in turn begetting Ray’s adored grandchildren Zachary, Nathan, and Zoey. All of this lay ahead in a future whose largesse couldn’t possibly be guessed at. Ray had a lot of runway ahead, and he ran with it.
Following graduation, Ray’s outsized aptitudes drew the attention of a cohort of helpful adults — including the local state representative — who thought it best that Ray skip college entirely and work with the PhDs at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. A path to that gig was arranged with defense contractor EG&G, through whose offices and historically relevant Cold War expertise Ray, initially hired as a technician, would rise like a morning star. It was while in the employ of EG&G that Ray and his young family would first come to Santa Barbara in 1960, renting Fess Parker’s house in Hope Ranch.
From EG&G, Ray would leap from strength to strength, driven by an inquiring mind on fire: Advanced Semiconductor Products, Inc.; Nano Life Sciences, Inc.; K &A Design Group (a collaborative real estate and design juggernaut of which Peter, a revered style consultant and architect, has been described as the engine); and Alexandros. Ray’s Technicolor life would allow screen time for all his personae (or many of them): 9-year-old paperboy receiving music tutelage from retired silent-screen siren Clara Bow, tech specialist with security clearance assigned to Area 51, Cold War nuke specialist overseeing 14,000 workers, self-taught master of six musical instruments — boredom kept its distance.
Under the Advanced Semiconductor Products imprimatur, Ray would invent and patent an optimizing link in the lithography process (patent number 4378953) whose effect would be to shrink the geometries of computational hardware, ushering in the laptop, the cell phone, and the you-name-it. This would be one of some 33 patents Ray would secure over the course of an avid career in tech — many of them classified and owned by his respective employers.
Scientist, inventor, composer, self-discoverer, Ray Winn’s avid pilgrimage of intellectual and emotional revelation reached its zenith in the early ’70s, when what should Ray Winn discover but a largely unmapped terra incognita called Ray Winn. So it was that when a common friend introduced Ray and Peter in 1988, stars aligned at the doorstep and 37 years of inseparable love commenced like the turning of a page. When the two moved from Santa Fe back to Santa Barbara in the early ’90s, a family circle was complete. For decades, Ray and Peter held court for friends, family, and fundraising nonprofits at their spacious residence on Rametto Road and their later bungalow in the heart of Birnam Wood. The denouement of all that sunstruck adventure found Peter at Ray’s bedside when Winn’s Comet completed its earthbound circuit and left the solar system.
Ray Winn was preceded in death by his mother, Angie ONeil; son Paul Winn; and former wife, Lorraine Cass. He is survived by his son Kevin Winn; daughter, Lisa (Winn) Luna; grandchildren Zachary Winn, Nathan Winn, and Zoey Luna. And his loving spouse, Peter Kavoian.
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