‘I have a question’: Ray Kinard’s journey as a lifelong learner about York County

I was ready to say goodbye to Ray Kinard after checking in on his health and asking if I could stop by his Springettsbury Township home.

He asked me to wait.

“I have a question,” he said.

He would make such a query numerous times over the years. Sometimes, he greeted me that way. This time, he waited until we were signing off on the phone.

Who were the three members of the Continental Congress who served during the entire time Congress met in York? he asked.

He was referencing a column I had written the week before about the sacrifices of health and life made by delegates to Congress here in York in 1777 and 1778 and back home. I had mentioned one of the three, James Lovell of Massachusetts, in my York Sunday News column. But I had not included the other two, and Ray called me on it.

That is vintage Ray Kinard, a self-taught local historian, who must own the largest private collection of York County and American history books in the county. It would be hard to prove that, and Ray isn’t sure of the count. But he believes there are 1,500 volumes in various rooms in his house.

Anyway, looking at this collection wasn’t the reason for my visit.

Ray — many folks call him “Pete” as evidenced by his email address, peteeray@comcast.net — had told me at an OLLI class at Penn State York that I taught in April that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and would soon start treatments.

He showed rare skill

Ray is widely known in York County for his local history interests. That intrigue started in grade school in Spring Grove, and it was cultivated by his friend and mentor Armand Gladfelter, who knew Seven Valleys, Ray’s hometown, better than anyone and would go on to write a three-volume set on the topic.

Ray worked at the A.C. Henry Mill after high school, which became a part of his later story. Ray and the late Terry Koller visited the sites of more than 300 mills in York County. That included some standing and others whose foundations were hard to locate.

Ray did close work with Gladfelter in the evenings as a chicken doctor. The two would go to farms to exercise a rare skill. They checked the chickens to determine those that were laying eggs and those that weren’t. Ray explained from a chair in his East York home that their skills were in demand because it made no sense for a farmer to feed one-third of his chickens if they weren’t laying eggs.

The point is that Ray spent a lot of time with Gladfelter and kept up his local history studies long after his mentor died and long after his own retirement as a lead assembler at Cole Steel. In fact, we compared notes about how many of my presentations Ray has attended. I thought 30. Ray believes it’s more than 50. In many presentations — in OLLI classes, for example — I would sometimes ask Ray to explain topics because he could do that better than I could.

It would be incomplete to view Ray as just a student of local history, someone who takes in but does not give back. He is a teacher as well, a presenter on about a dozen topics before local history groups and a keynote speaker at many events.

And a doer. As part of the U.S. bicentennial in 1976, he restored the Seven Valleys jail, an 1899 holding tank used mainly for drunks sleeping it off.

Ray is an integral part of many historical organizations: York Civil War Roundtable member, past vice president of the Codorus Valley Area Historical Society, board member of the Friends of the Heritage Rail Trail and greeter and resident historian of the Hanover Junction Museum, his favorite site in York County.

Ray served as a member of a committee at OLLI, an enrichment initiative for lifelong learners, to recruit speakers for the array of continuing education offerings that sometimes top 90 classes in a term.

Ray gives his views

When Ray did not attend an OLLI class in May, I wondered how his cancer treatments were going.

So I visited Ray to, among other things, interview him for this story.

Because of the cancer treatments, Ray, 88, is having trouble eating and has dropped more than 30 pounds. After a doctor’s appointment two days after my visit, he stopped his cancer treatment with the hope that he could eat.

As usual, Ray commented on a number of local history topics, particularly about those in his Civil War wheelhouse. For example, he recalled taking classes from local historian Thomas L. Schaefer at Penn State York in the 1990s: “Tom Schaefer was the original Scott Mingus.”

And he believes York’s controversial surrender to the Confederates in 1863 was justified because of the unpredictability of Confederate Gen. Jubal Early, rash leader of the rebel raid, in torching the town: “I said the guy was a little crazy.”

And about the U.S. president who is the topic of scores of books in Kinard’s vast library: “I can’t get enough of Abraham Lincoln.”

Indeed, I left Ray as he lay in bed, reading Dale Carnegie’s “Lincoln the Unknown,” among dozens of books, newspapers and other publications across his bedspread. He had left enough space to sleep, which he says he has been doing a lot.

A walking Wikipedia

In recent years, Ray has assisted Tom Yingling, leader of the Jefferson-based Codorus Valley historical group, in piecing through the society’s museum collection. This was up Ray’s alley because he appreciates newspaper clippings and old photos. His library includes well-organized notebooks of those things.

He would tell Yingling each week: “This is fun! I really enjoy looking through all these things.” Sometimes, he would get permission to bring something home to read it and then bring it back.

Yingling said he considers Ray his Wikipedia for Seven Valleys and Hanover Junction knowledge. And he keeps learning.

“When Ray would come across something he did not know before,” Yingling said about Ray’s Codorus Valley museum work, “he would exclaim, ‘Golly days!’”

The three who stayed

In my visit, I did not have enough time to answer the question he had posed about the tireless congressmen who never went home in the nine months they stayed in York.

And I know Ray reads these weekly columns in the York Sunday News.

So here’s my answer, Ray: James Lovell and Francis Dana of Massachusetts and Henry Laurens of South Carolina.

And, Ray, I am hoping and praying for your restoration of health. And I hope to see you in an upcoming class.

Upcoming presentations

Jim McClure will present with Scott Mingus and Jamie Noerpel about “History Publishing from Generating the Idea to Marketing Your Work” at 7 p.m. June 6 at the York County Writers Roundtable’s quarterly meeting, York County History Center, 250 E. Market St., York.

McClure will teach two OLLI classes: “21st-Century York County: Begins with Celebration, with Promise Ahead. But Oh, Those Years in Between Were Rough,” 1 p.m., June 17; “The Hex Murder: York County's Notorious Witchcraft Trial”; 11 a.m., June 25. (Zoom only).” https://olli.psu.edu/york.

Jim McClure is a retired editor of the York Daily Record and has authored or co-authored nine books on York County history. Reach him at jimmcclure21@outlook.com.