Ray Ayers
Winning professional honors and awards is nothing new to Ray R. Ayers, but getting the 2015 Offshore Technology Conference Heritage Award was still a thrill for the successful University of Mississippi alumnus.
Still achieving technical breakthroughs in his 51st year as a professional engineer, Ayers has enjoyed a career filled with multiple contributions in a number of areas that have contributed greatly to the safety and viability of the offshore technology industry. It is for the whole of this work that he was awarded the lifetime recognition.
“I was overwhelmed,” said Ayers, who earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1963. A prolific inventor with 48 U.S. patents, he has earned the Silver Patent Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and major professional honors from the American Gas Association, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Ocean Energy Center.
Ayers considers his greatest career achievements to be his work on deepwater pipeline design and repair, technology to help clean up oil spills on water and a polyester rope mooring system. He worked more than 50 years for such companies as Brown Engineering Co., NASA’s Saturn V program and Shell Oil Co. He has worked in a range of positions from engineer to research adviser, and is a staff consultant for Stress Engineering Services.
“I can remember back when I was working full-time during the day while going to graduate school at night,” Ayers said. “My young kids would see me working at the breakfast table, and they would ask me, ‘Daddy, are you working on work-work or school-work?’ Of course, my answer changed each day.”
The Brookhaven native grew up in Biloxi. After graduating from UM, he completed the master’s program in engineering mechanics from the University of Alabama at Huntsville in 1968 and the doctoral program in civil engineering from the University of Houston in 1973. Though pleased to have earned those advanced degrees, Ayers credits Ole Miss with having given him his start.
“I decided on Ole Miss because they offered me a Forest Land Scholarship, the only scholarship offered me from anywhere,” Ayers said. “UM provided an excellent general civil engineering education and the motivation to succeed. And I will never forget the smiling ladies at the cafeteria who fed me the best food in the state of Mississippi.”
Ayers remembers C.C. Feng as his favorite UM engineering professor.
“Dr. Feng would start a class session with the chalk in the right hand and the eraser in the left,” he said. “He would say, ‘So far to now, we have covered (topic). Then, he proceeded to write on one side and erase on the other, making it difficult to take notes. So I would say he was challenging!”
Ayers’ mentors included Dean R. Malcolm Guess, “who encouraged me to study harder so that I would not lose my scholarship,” and the Rev. Don Anderson of the campus Wesley Foundation. “He made it possible for me to have a rent-free room to live in at the Wesley Foundation House. He also provided short-term loans (lunch money) until additional funds arrived.”
Ayers is married to his college sweetheart, the former Carolyn Kerr, who earned her bachelor’s degree in music at UM. They have two sons, Tom and Andy, and a daughter, Cheryl Sauls. He enjoys singing choral music at Memorial Drive United Methodist Church in West Houston, Texas.