Minister: Ex-Iowa Gov. Ray hoped legacy would inspire others

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“There’s a lot of people in both parties who together would find someone like Bob Ray very attractive,” Quinn said.

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The Rev. Bill Spangler-Dunning, regional minister and president of the Christian Church in the Upper Midwest, officiated the funeral at First Christian Church in Des Moines, not far from Ray’s childhood home. He said Ray hoped his legacy would inspire others to action.

“I heard only yesterday that some say that they don’t make leaders like him anymore,” he said. “I think, to the contrary, he hoped and I daresay believed that they do. They’re just sitting in pews waiting to be inspired to rise. May you rise soon and change the world like he did.”

A day earlier, Ray became the first Iowa official to lie in state at the Capitol in over six decades — since Gov. William S. Beardsley died in office in 1954.

Ray and his state were catapulted to national prominence in 1974, when he broke with other governors and encouraged Tai Dam refugees and later other Vietnam War refugees to move to Iowa. He did so despite concerns among some of his constituents that the refugees — who entered the U.S. legally with the support of the federal government — would take jobs and other resources away from existing Iowa residents.

Ray defended the resettlements on moral grounds in a 1979 speech in St. Louis, invoking the memory of the United States refusing asylum in 1939 for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany . He also described his experience watching people die around him in a Cambodian refugee camp.

“If we don’t have the heart, or the spirit, to save human lives, then how can we be expected to help those whose lives are already assured?” Ray asked.

Som Baccam, a Democratic community leader who knew Ray well after coming to Iowa in 1975 as a refugee from Laos, said Ray is regarded as a saviour by many in the state’s Southeast Asian community. She said he was fair-minded with a “bipartisan heart” that could bring people together.

At the funeral, Quinn described visiting a refugee camp in Thailand where they were taken to a hut displaying an Iowa Department of Transportation highway map.

“Gov. Bob Ray had made the shape of our state the symbol of hope to people 12,000 miles away,” Quinn said.

David Oman, Ray’s onetime chief of staff, said in an interview that Ray sought to win votes from Democrats and independents as governor, not just his Republican base. He hopes future campaigns will be successful by returning to Ray’s bipartisan approach.

Under Ray’s leadership, Republicans who controlled the Legislature adopted several laws that would have been less striking coming from a Democratic administration, including substantially increasing how much the state funds public schools and implementing collective bargaining rights for public employees.

“People tell us anecdotally and by poll that they want clear, differentiated leaders who reach out across party lines and just solve problems,” Oman said. “That defines who Bob Ray was.”

Scott Stewart, The Associated Press