Reynolds, Ray

Raymond Palmer Reynolds—"Ray" to most who knew him—was a 1940 graduate of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where, as a senior, he was also a champion member of the Varsity Debate Team and helped to launch Lafayette College’s new reader’s journal, Touchstone, for which Reynolds wrote short fiction, humor, and poetry. During the 1939 academic year, Reynolds was one of two students to participate in an exchange program to Occidental College, a co-ed liberal arts institution in Los Angeles, California. After earning his Lafayette College bachelor’s, Reynolds returned to Occidental College to earn his Master of Arts in Literature in spring of 1942.¹ 

Two decades later, when Grossmont Junior College opened its doors on the Monte Vista High School campus in 1961, Ray joined the charter faculty to teach journalism classes within the English Department.  By 1964, however,  the English Department began expanding and hiring new English faculty, and, by 1968, Ray Reynolds was tenured permanently to a new Journalism Department, where, for the next twenty years, he taught journalism, mass communication, and film courses. One of his enduring legacies as a journalism professor is Grossmont College’s campus newspaper, The G (which has since been renamed The Summit). As faculty advisor to The G, Reynolds continued to cultivate the campus’s literary interests. Along with Pat Higgins, he produced several literary supplements for the paper during the 1970s that, although not Grossmont College’s first literary magazine, eventually paved the way for Vera Anderson to start FirstDraft Literary Magazine later that same decade (which later changed its name to Acorn Review.)

Ray P. Reynolds retired in 1983 and turned to writing and antiquarian book collecting.  In 1972, he had already published Cat’spaw Utopia, a chronicle of the construction of the Los Mochis railway and utopian socialist Albert K. Owen’s scheme to create a colony in Mexico on the Pacific.  Reynolds’s next historical text, California the Curious (Padre Productions, 1989), offered a rarified look at California history through chronicles of its oddities and eccentricities. Historian Kevin Starr composed the foreword to Reynolds’s book, describing it as a “Zen garden. Each fact is exquisitely emplaced.”

Long before the book was even published, however, Reynolds had already been well bitten by his rare book collecting hobby.  In fact, for a short time, Reynolds owned and operated an antiquarian book shop in El Cajon, The Patchy Fog.  In 1985, he co-edited and published a reference book for rare book collectors, The Insider's Guide to Old Books, Magazines, Newspapers and Trade Catalogs (Windmill Publishing), with Ronald S. Barlowe.

Reynolds continued to live in El Cajon for the next fifteen years, until passing away in the summer of 2001.

• Cat'spaw Utopia. El Cajon, CA: Ray Reynolds (Bordeaux Printers), 1972.
• California the Curious. Padre Productions, 1989. ISBN 9780939919253
• "Grossmont Emeritus Rules Bizarre?" Letter to the Editor. GCCCD Grapevine vol. 7, no. 2 (July 1997): p2.

Co-Authored

• Reynolds, Ray and Ronald S. Barlowe. The Insider's Guide to Old Books, Magazines, Newspapers and Trade Catalogs. Windmill Publishing Company, 1985. ISBN 9780933846050
• Reynolds, Ray and Tom Kerr. “Reynolds, Kerr Find Life At Occidental Like Screen Play.” Letter. The Lafayette 15 November 1938: p1, 3.

• "Collins Remembered." GCCCD Grapevine vol. 6, no. 3 (November 1996): p3.
• "Debate Candidates Answer First Call." The Lafayette (Lafayette College, Easton, PA) 12 October 1938: p1.
• "Debating Finals Held This Evening." The Lafayette (Lafayette College, Easton, PA) 20 May 1938: p4.
• Reynolds, Ray. 1962 Migma Yearbook. La Mesa, CA: Grossmont Junior College, Monte Vista High School, 1962. np.
• The Gallery, 1974: A Photographic Directory of the Grossmont College Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont Junior College District, 1974.
• _____. The Gallery: A 25th Anniversary Photographic Directory of the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community Faculty, Administration, and Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District, 1987. p87.
• Grossmont College Institutional Archives. Learning Resource Center. Grossmont College, Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District.
• Higgins, Pat. "Ray Reynolds." Obituary. GCCCD Grapevine vol. 11, no. 3 (November 2001): p12.
• "New 'Touchstone’ Is Issued Tonight." The Lafayette (Lafayette College, Easton, PA)  26 October 1939: p1.
• "New 'Touchstone’ to Appear Nov. 18." The Lafayette (Lafayette College, Easton, PA) 12 October 1938: p1.
• "Reynolds, Ray; Writer, Book Collector, California Historian." Obituary. Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA) 25 July 2001. Online.
• Scanlan, Tom. "Where Are They Now?" GCCCD Grapevine vol. 19, no. 1 (March 2009): p5.
• "SEA Beats Dekes for Debate Cup." The Lafayette (Lafayette College, Easton, PA) 4 May 1938: p4.
• "Where Have all the Young Years Gone?" GCCCD Grapevine vol. 7, no. 1 (April 1997): p1.

• James K. Bell 1961-1963
• Chester H. Palmer 1961-1965
• Martin Gerrish 1961-1964* (*tenured to Theater Dept. 1964-1996)
• George M. Washington 1961-1965* (*tenured to Foreign Languages Dept. 1965-1976)
• Ray Reynolds 1961-1968* (*tenured to Journalism Dept. 1968-1983)
• Charline Lamons 1961-1983 (Chair 1963-1966; 1968-1969) 
• Robert W. Danielson 1961-1986 (Chair 1961-1963; 1967-1969)