Ray Allen Bucklin

Jennings

Funeral services for Mr. Ray Allen Bucklin, of Gainesville, FL will be held in the Raymond United Methodist Church on Saturday, November 6, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. with Rev. Laura Nusbaum officiating.    Burial will follow in Raymond Methodist Cemetery under the direction of Miguez Funeral Home.

Visitation for Mr. Bucklin will begin on Friday, November 5, at 4:00 p.m. in the Miguez Funeral Home Chapel in Jennings and will continue until 7:00 p.m.  It will resume Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m. and end at 9:30 a.m. to leave for church services.

Ray Allen Bucklin was a Professor in Agricultural Engineering at the University of Florida. He authored several books and papers and collaborated on many more that are often referred to in agricultural building projects.

Ray grew up in the Raymond community, the son of Herbert and Dora Bucklin, helping on his parent’s rice farm from a young age greatly influenced his career and research interests.  Though he was far away from the family farm, his connection to farming remained.  Ray was proud to say that at least on paper he was the last actual farmer in the Agricultural Engineering department.

Ray graduated from Hathaway High School in 1968 then earned a B.S. in Agricultural Engineering at University of Southwestern Louisiana in 1972.  Ray then served in the Air Force and was stationed at Grand Forks, N.D. manning a Nuclear Missile Silo.  With the help of the G.I. Bill, Ray went on to further his education in Agricultural Engineering earning first his master’s degree at Louisiana State University in 1978 followed by his Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky in 1982, where he was an instructor in Engineering Mechanics for his final two years.

Ray put his education immediately to work joining the faculty at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida in 1982 where he flourished in his position assisting Florida’s farmers through University and State programs, as a researcher, and mentoring in the graduate program for 36 years.    Still active after retirement in 2018, he returned to his roots within the grain and storage industry, doing work and consulting, as well as guiding his remaining graduate students.

During Ray’s time with the University of Florida Agricultural and Biological Engineering department, the importance of continued research grew, encouraging the development of the graduate student program.    Ray helped grow this brand-new Ph. D program into a much larger program, enjoying working and researching vast and varied projects with his Graduate students.

Ray’s research included agricultural structures, livestock housing and heat stress relief, grain drying and storage, and structures for plant production.  While much of his work centered on the health and productivity of Florida’s dairy cows, greenhouses, and grains, his results have been applied in many other tropical and subtropical regions and beyond.  Ray also worked in the field of space agriculture and biology, exploring plant growth for long-term space missions, including greenhouses on Mars.

In 2007, Ray Bucklin received the prestigious Henry Giese Structures and Environment award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, which inducted him into their 2008 Class of Fellows honoring his significant engineering impacts.  The Rural Builder magazine added Ray onto their Hall of Fame in 2009, in recognition of his contributions to agricultural construction.

There was something special about Ray in the way he related to his graduate students.  They seemed to develop a genuine affection for him that went well beyond mere colleagues.  In everything he did, even outside the classroom, he was always teaching, learning or both.

Ray is survived by his sister, Louise Connors, her two children, and many extended Bucklin and Koll cousins.