When El Paso celebrates her sesquicentennial, corn growing will have advanced far beyond where it is today, and we predict Lester Pfister's pioneering in both seed production and agriculture will have helped to create the better conditions.
George Ray, the son of Jerry and Harriett (Swallow) Ray, was born in Metamora, Illinois on March 24, 1876, but he spent so much time in and around Panola, with many relatives there, that we consider him from our area.
He received his A. B. degree from the University of Illinois in 1898; a civil engineering degree in 1910, and a Doctor of Science from LaFayette College at Easton, Pennsylvania in 1916. He married Edna Rose Hammers of an old Panola family. The Illinois Central utilized Ray in construction work, giving him one promotion after another. On March 1, 1903 he entered the employ of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Company, and from that date until March 31, 1946, when he retired, he was successively a division engineer, chief engineer, vice-president in charge of operations, and finally, general manager. He was also engineering assistant to the regional director of the eastern region for the United States Railroad Administration.
Tackling difficult jobs was a specialty with George Ray. He built the fine passenger station at Scranton, Pennsylvania, the locomotive shops in the same city, the drawbridge over the Hackensack River, the passenger terminal at Buffalo, the Lackawanna terminal warehouse at Jersey City, the bridge over the Delaware River, and the Pauline Kill viaduct. He supervised the elevation of tracks over two busy railroads west of Bergen Hill tunnel and kept the heavy traffic going during the construction. Ray constructed the famous Pequest Fill, largest railroad embankment in the world, three miles long with an average height of 110 feet, and containing 6,625,000 cubic yards of fill.
Perhaps Ray's masterpiece is the Tunkhannock Viaduct, largest concrete railroad bridge in the world, 2,375 feet long and 240 feet high over the creek. Into its construction went four and one-half million cubic feet of concrete and over two and one-quarter million pounds of reinforcing steel. This work has been the subject of praise from Theodore Dreiser in his book called A Hoosier Holiday.
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