Here is a man that we all wished we would have gotten to know better.  Ray Colgan, father of the Colgan clan, was a great man and father while he lived.  Dying at a very young age due to heart problems, Ray left to see Jesus at an earlier age than most do.  Ray was known in his time as the strongest man in North Dakota.  When asked to demonstrate his strength he would place a hard metal bottle opener flat in his hand and roll it up into a ball.  Also, when his boss once asked him to make sure that a large valve was tight even though Ray

reassured him that it was, he twisted off the valve hand wheel with one hand, handed it to his boss, and said, "it's tight."  His mother begged him never to fight a man because she was worried that he would accidentally kill his opponent.  When faced with an opposition, Ray did not want to fight, however, after celebrating in a bar with his brothers, one of his brothers boasted to all the men in the bar that his brother could "lick any man in the bar."  A huge brawl ensued, and Ray and his brother had to fight their way out of the building.

Ray worked in security during World War II at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation before he died of complications from a heart condition that stemmed from rhumatic fever as a child.  Surviving him to this day are his wife Laurene, sons; Joe, Tom, Paul, John, and Phil, and daughters; Janet, Mary and Alice.