Feature Story
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT ON
VTC Board Member Ray Funkhouser V TC
Board Member Ray Funkhouser has been a great asset to the turfgrass
industry for many years. He may be retired, but his years of serving and advocating for turf professionals continue through his work with the VTC Board. We sat down with Ray to talk about work, life, and family – you’re sure to learn something from this stalwart member of our organization!
Virginia Turfgrass Journal: Can you share a little bit about your career path? Ray Funkhouser: I came into the turf industry about halfway through my professional career. My entire career has been involved with the crop protection chemical side of the business. I started off on the agricultural side, working with a number of crops, starting with the fruit crops here in Virginia and moving over to a lot of the agronomic crops. Then I had the opportunity to move over to the specialty side, which included turf, which was always an area of interest for me. VTJ: How big of a change was that to go from the agricultural side and move into turfgrass? RF: Very easy to do – it’s kind of a natural transition because there’s so many similarities between the two. We’re dealing with plants, we’re dealing with a lot of botany and how plants grow, how they function, how they thrive and the threats that can attack them. So it’s really dealing with just a little bit of a different crop of the end result of what you’re trying to accomplish, but many of the techniques are very similar. VTJ: Where did you start with your education? What made you decide to go into this field and what route did you take from there? RF: When I was coming out of high school, I knew I wanted to have a job where I could use science on a daily basis, and particularly on the plant side. Growing up, I was one generation removed from the farm that my father grew up on, but my family went back to that farm often. So I was surrounded by a lot of agriculture, and I liked that field. I decided to go to Delaware Valley College, which is now Delaware Valley University. I was originally accepted as a horticulture major, but I knew I needed to go on and get an advanced degree. Specifically, I wanted to get into the agricultural crop protection area. I was very fortunate to get an internship at American Cyanamid at the end of my freshman year in college. They had a big agricultural research farm in Princeton, New Jersey. I interned that summer in the insecticide screening department. It was exciting because I was in the industry and saw some numbered compounds there that years later, actually I saw make it to the marketplace as commercial products. Then another summer I was with the US Forest Service working on a gypsy moth research project that was a USDA project, based out of Cornell University, and I was stationed in the field. We were gathering tremendous amounts of data on the gypsy moth. I was very fortunate coming out of college to have had some experience in the industry. VTJ: How would you advise new turfgrass managers on how to get their feet wet in all of the areas that are necessary to be in this field?
22 | VIRGINIA TURFGRASS JOURNAL May/June 2021 www.vaturf.org
