By Dave Thornton

Robert W. Raymond (CCS class of 1958) was a deeply religious man, who especially cherished and honored kindred and friends who had toiled honorably in the military service of their country.

In his family, the line of soldiers reaches back, generation before generation, to the American Revolution, and embraces every war in which Americans have fought.

Many of you knew Bob far longer than I did.

I did not know him when he and Carleton Foster and Paul Schneider and other young people about the Village were sports car enthusiasts, enamored of the tiny, two cycle, front-wheel drive master-piece then exported by Saab.

I did not know Bob when his sobriquet was "Speed" and he and this coterie of close companions voyaged each October to Watkins Glen for the big sports car rally, where they worked as flagmen.

I did not know Bob in his Navy days during the Vietnam era, when he served on a salvage vessel in the Caribbean, plucking space satellites from the sea.

Bob's life was like a well-cut jewel. It had many facets.

He was a skilled model builder. Indeed, his home is lined with miniature World War II war ships and antique railroad models.

He was very proud of being an alumnus of Cambridge Central School. I remember him deciding the old Alumni Association should be reactivated, so he compiled one of his famous lists.

He found and entered into the computer the name of every student to graduate from Cambridge High School, from its founding in 1891 to the present year, together with addresses and phone numbers of the living.

Who but Bob Raymond would have even considered such an undertaking?

You may know that these past few years Bob was so crippled by arthritis that in order to operate the computer he grasped a stylus in one hand and entered every word and command one character at a time.

And yet, he would labor long nights entering into the computer lengthy texts of local history.

By the end of his life, Bob was fully disabled.

Often he visited Mary McClellan Hospital; indeed, at times he lived there, where his displays of courage and character made him the special friend of doctors, nurses and staff.

For you see, nothing ever defeated Bob Raymond. His strength of will, his great mental powers, and his belief in a mighty, intervening God, led him in triumph through physical tribulations that would have sent lesser men to their graves long before.

I got to know Bob about the time he applied his peculiar organizational genius to the local custom of celebrating the Fourth of July by floating down the Battenkill on an inner tube.

Bob and company converted the custom to a "controlled" float, known as The Battenkill Predicted Log Race.

The community went slightly daft each year in designing and building crafts with no more practical purpose than to support the weight of four wet humans and an ice chest of beer, while drawing no more than two inches of water on a timed drift down the Battenkill on the Fourth of July. It was Bob's kind of challenge.

Bob's was a most receptive and retentive mind. I think he never met an idea or concept that he didn't like, or couldn't improve.

They say that Bob survived seven heart attacks before the muscle became so devastated that the eighth took him from us.

But let us set the record straight. Bob Raymond didn't die from having too little "heart".

He died from having too much "heart".

Every time Old Cambridge needed something done that required great skill and straight thinking, we turned to Bob Raymond.

He expended his intellect and the strength of his crippled body responding to the calls of his Community.

Bob was the resident expert on our covered bridges. He quite literally wrote the book on the bridges of Old Cambridge.

With his buddy Carleton, he built some of the now lost bridges, precisely to scale.

Bob was a community activist in the very best sense. When some hapless Washington County highway engineer or supervisor sought to remove a bridge or make a repair that was not true to the original design, he would hear from Bob Raymond.

Bob helped save the Shushan and Rexleigh covered bridges. And when it looked like Buskirk would lose its famous bridge, and that shoddy repairs would be made at Eagleville, Bob, the noble Knight in badly rusted armor, sallied forth.

At the time of his death, Bob was serving on a County committee to over-see and advise on all repairs to his beloved bridges.

He was the premier historian of Old Cambridge. In the 1970s, Bob, Carleton, and Kerry McKernon prepared slide programs on turn of the century Cambridge and The Great Cambridge Fair.

Later, Bob, Carleton and I wrote grants and formed organizations to save local historical documents. We published the popular, Old Cambridge History Book of 1988. Bob did two of its best chapters.

Then we founded OCARC: The Old Cambridge Archive and Records Center. Under the OCARC banner, Bob and I published six separate monographs of local history.

Bob took a Front Line role in the successful drive to erect a monument to Rick Maussert, Old Cambridge's only Medal of Honor recipient.

When we formed COMPHROC, the Committee to raise a Permanent Honor Roll to the Veterans of Old Cambridge, Bob headed the committee that wrote the ground rules.

That is, Bob wrote the ground-rules and we on his committee admired and agreed to them.

Characteristically, Bob took on that part of the task which, in years past, had proven impossible. He set out to create the complete list of eligible veterans whose names will go on the Honor Roll.

Long into the night, he would labor alone on this formidable under-taking, bent with his stylus over the computer.

COMPHROC is the last community service project that Robert W. Raymond was involved with.

Had Bob been more prone to say "no" to such requests, it is possible that he would be with us yet. But he was inclined to live life beyond what his frail constitution could support.

He thought and worked in the superlative degree; seeking to know and to do what was right; and, always, to create the best.

He was a Soldier Knight, dedicated to the defense of the realm and protection of the innocent.

Knights of legend were sent forth bearing deliberate handicaps, the more to ennoble their triumphs. So it was with Bob, who fought battles and performed good deeds while encased in badly dented and sadly rusted armor.

But Soldier Raymond, like the Butterfly in its chrysalis, has now shed his shabby, Earth-bound form and stands this morning in the ranks of the Hosts of God. He stands resplendent in an armor so fresh and bright that it blinds the mortal eye; an armor so strong that it scorns the tarnishing forces of Man.