Tupelo, Miss. -- Hosea Manfred Ray, a retired lawyer, died at his home in Tupelo on Wednesday, May 18, 2011. He was 86.
The funeral will be at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, May 21, 2011, at First Presbyterian Church, Tupelo. A graveside service will follow at 1:15 p.m. at Oxford Memorial Cemetery, Oxford, Miss. Pegues Funeral Home is handling arrangements. Visitation with the family is 9:30 a.m. until service time in McFadden Hall of the Church.
Born in the south Alcorn County community of Hinkle to Thomas Henry Ray and Isabelle Dunlap Ray in 1924, H.M. grew up on the family farm located on Hinkle Creek. He graduated from Biggersville High School in 1942, and studied for one year at the University of Mississippi before volunteering in the U.S. Army Air Force for service as a bomber pilot in World War II. He flew missions from England late in the war.
H.M. returned to Ole Miss in Fall 1945 and enrolled in law school there in Fall 1946. He was awarded his law degree in 1949. At Ole Miss, H.M. was a member of Sigma Chi social fraternity and selected for listing in Who’s Who.
While a law student, H.M. was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives from Alcorn County for the 1948-51 term. The legislature’s “Class of ‘48” included a number of war veterans who passed a progressive agenda, including a Workmen’s Compensation Act, which among the 48 states only Mississippi then lacked.
H.M. practiced law briefly in Corinth before being recalled to active duty as a U.S. Air Force intelligence staff officer in London during the Korean Conflict. Following that service, he resumed law practice in Corinth with his brother James Hugh Ray, including service as Alcorn County Prosecuting Attorney from 1956-57 and 1958-61. In 1960 he served as chairman of the Corinth-Alcorn County Airport Commission.
Upon President Kennedy’s nomination and confirmation by the U.S. Senate, H.M. took office as United States Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi in 1961. He served with distinction in that office, and was re-appointed by Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter until his resignation in 1981.
At the request of U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson in 1973, H.M. served with 14 other U.S. attorneys as a founding member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys. He chaired the committee in 1976-77 for Attorney General Edward H. Levi, and served until 1978.
In a 1989 history of U.S. Attorneys, one of H.M.’s successors in the Northern District wrote that beginning “in 1962, U.S. Attorney H.M. Ray . . . with the support of President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, litigated for years, under very difficult circumstances” seeking to secure civil rights and did so again in “nationally significant litigation with the school desegregation cases of the late 1960s and 1970s.”
Following his federal government service, H.M. practiced law with the Wise, Carter, Child & Caraway firm in Jackson and then with the Mississippi Attorney General’s office where he drafted white collar crime legislation for Mississippi before retiring in 1989.
H.M. was active in the life and work of First Presbyterian Church of Corinth, First Presbyterian Church of Oxford, Fondren Presbyterian Church of Jackson, and First Presbyterian Church of Tupelo, and served as a Presbyterian elder for many years.
H.M. is survived by his sons Howard Manfred Ray of Skokie, Illinois, and Mark Andrew Ray and his wife Sallie Kate of Tupelo. He is also survived by his grandchildren Howard Manfred Ray, Jr. of Highland Park, Illinois; Jennifer Ann Ray of Toledo, Ohio; and Mark Andrew Ray, Jr. and Mary Taylor Ray of Tupelo; and by great-grandchildren.
He was predeceased by his wife, Merle Burt Ray, in 1993, and by his parents, his stepfather Andrew Jackson McCord, and his brothers, Thomas Henry Ray, John Eugene Ray, and James Hugh Ray.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to First Presbyterian Church, 322 Jefferson Street, Tupelo, MS 38801 or a charity of choice.