Kermit Racely's Obituary
Kermit Lamar Racely, 89, legendary Dover Corp. R & D Engineer and Memphis Park Commission Hall of Fame athlete died Wednesday, Oct.1 at Methodist Hospice Residence in Memphis, after a brief stay. He was husband to the late Imogean Covington Racely and the only child of Lelia Culberhouse Racely and Robert Jewell Racely and the grandson of Willie Wooten Culberhouse and Robert S. Culberhouse of Jonesboro, Ark. Mr. Racely was born in Jonesboro and graduated at the age of 19 from Arkansas State University in 1944 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Excelling in athletics and scholarship at ASU, he lettered in baseball as an Indians pitcher and was named a Wilson Fellow, ASU’s annual recognition of the outstanding member of its senior class. After graduation, Mr. Racely worked at the Oak Ridge National Lab and at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before joining the Rotary Lift Company in 1947, where he retired 42 years later. A part of the Lift Division initially, he soon moved to the Elevator Division when the company split the two and adopted its new name, Dover Corp. in 1955. He held many patents but was especially proud of an automatic locking safety device for lifts and elevators and his recessed sensor elevator buttons which he described as “just nearly indestructible.” Mr. Racely was a major design engineer on two well-known Dover projects: the Stardust Hotel Ballroom stage lift in Las Vegas and the New York Metropolitan Opera segmented stage (an upgrade of Dover’s design for the Caracas, Venezuela Opera.) Although these were glamorous jobs, he considered them “showcase projects and we never made any great money on them.” His heart lay in designs that were timeless and profitable. Mr. Racely was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals but chose an engineering career. Elbow surgery ended his baseball playing and he turned to amateur fast-pitch softball which enjoyed national popularity throughout the 1950’s and early 1960’s. He was known as “Showboat” Racely for his colorful style: a figure-eight delivery, a large white handkerchief “head rag” before sweatbands were invented and his occasional hot disagreements with umpires. He pitched for the championship Standard Parts team and later others well into the 1970’s, and he also made many of the team’s ASA-approved bats on his home shop lathe. The bats were treasured by players and many players kept their favorite bat when they retired. His wife, Imogean, had collected a lifetime of clippings, stats, and awards, and manager Ralph Galtelli lobbied for his inclusion in the Memphis Hall of Fame. In 1993, The Memphis Park Commission inducted him into its Hall of Fame for Softball. Throughout his life Mr. Racely spent a large part of his leisure time with family fishing first for bass at Maddox Bay, Blue Lake, Storm Creek and on Norfork Lake at their cabin at Blue Waters in Henderson. That was followed by trolling for crappie at Enid and Lakeview and in later years trout fishing on the White River– always with his wife at his side and in early and later years with his daughter, to whom he taught joy, love, and respect for Arkansas and its natural gifts. Music also soothed his soul. He was a talented upright bass player and played in numerous “pick-up” bands over his lifetime. In the 1980’s he played in a country group with his son-in-law and switched to the electric bass guitar. Always with a restless mind, he bought and taught himself to play the electric keyboard–entertaining Imogean through several orthopedic surgeries. After he retired from softball, he embraced gardening and nature photography, raising cosmos, zinnias, cleome, Mexican sunflowers and more in his front yard; occasionally he even added tomatoes to the front-yard raised beds. He and Mrs. Racely enjoyed travel and hiking around Gatlinburg and in The Great Smoky Mountains. Throughout the 1990’s they made trips to Fort Myers and Key West Florida and the Great Northwest USA and Canada. Mr. Racely was a 50-year member of Whitehaven Baptist Church where he kept Sunday school class attendance records and tallied Sunday collections until this past spring. He is survived by his only child, Ruth Ann Racely Weed; step-grandchildren Suzanne Weed Martin (James,) and Janet Weed Beaver, of Memphis and John Richard Weed (Leila Aziz) of San Francisco and their families; sister-in-law Joy Jones Covington of Wynne; his nephews Dr. Kenneth Hughes Covington (Laura,) Leslie Jones Covington (Shona,) Josie Lee Covington (Heather,) Leslie Hughes Covington Jr. (Laura;) niece Audrey Lee Hammond Butler (George) and nephew Abner Meek Hammond Jr. (Linda) and their families. Services will be Friday, Oct. 10 at The Lord’s Chapel at Elmwood Cemetery, with visitation at 1 p.m. and funeral service at 2 p.m. followed immediately by burial. A reception for mourners will follow interment. Memorial Park has charge of all arrangements.
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