Randy Ray Inducted Into Pampa High Hall of Fame

A faculty member at West Texas A&M University was honored by his hometown for career achievement and contribution to the community.

Randy Ray, associate lecturer and director of broadcasting at WT, returned to Pampa as one of two 2019 inductees into the Pampa Hall of Fame. The ceremony kicked off Pampa High School’s homecoming weekend, and in addition to an honorary reception, there was a school assembly and community luncheon.

“It’s great to return home to celebrate with friends and family. I was most excited to talk candidly with students about what education has done for me and the places it took me. My advice to them always is to ‘dig in,’ stick with it,” Ray said.

Ray, a ’80 graduate of Pampa, earned a degree in radio and TV from WT in 1984. He moved to Nashville as an audio engineer and later became the bass player for the Christian band Legend Seven. The group made two CDs selling 30,000 copies each, had several No. 1 hits and toured Europe twice. In 1994, Ray became manager of Sunset Studios, the largest sound stage and recording studio in the south at that time, and worked with artists like Spike Lee, Lynard Skynard, Garth Brooks and Neil Diamond.

In 2000, Ray became an instructor at Middle Tennessee State University while pursuing a master’s degree, and two years later, returned to teach at WT. He was instrumental in designing the Sybil B. Harrington Fine Arts Complex radio and television station, audio suites, recording studio and high-definition video studio.

Ray is best known by his students for bringing ‘real-world’ experiences and applicable industry knowledge to the classroom. He tells students to dream big while staying rooted to community. A true Pampa native, Ray has gifted the high school WT’s older media equipment and served as a pseudo recruiter to the University. He taught fellow Pampa locals WT alumna Dani Bromlow ’12, who presented him his Hall of Fame award, and WT alumnus Johnny Story ’09, who received a staff excellence award at WT in 2018.

“I met and started talking to Johnny about WT when I’d go home to visit my parents. He lived across the street,” Ray said. “And look, now Johnny is our Emmy Award winning broadcast engineer, and Dani teaches at Pampa Jr. High empowering students every day. I’m so proud of them, they’re rock stars.”

-West Texas A&M University