Ferrum, VA, October 15, 2025—For fifty-two years, people from far and near have seen a variety of traditional crafts exhibited at the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival on the campus of Ferrum College. In any of those years they would have seen Dr. William Wray ’61, from Callaway, Virginia, demonstrating his crocheting skills and chatting about his enduring love of Ferrum since his student days. He will return with many other craftspeople, performers, and talented farm animals with their humans at the 2025 festival on October 25, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
If you ask him, Dr. Wray will say he has exhibited at the Ferrum folklife festival for 57 years, because there was a folk festival in a building next to St. James Church in the village of Ferrum before the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival started on the campus in 1973. He doesn’t travel to other festivals, but he makes a vast array of goods to sell at this one, including scarves, afghans, doilies, ornaments, sweaters, dishcloths, and handbags that are popular with younger festival goers.
Among Dr. Wray’s larger works are two wall hangings he donated to Vaughn Chapel (currently on display in the choir loft), depicting the Last Supper and the Lord’s Prayer. He has also made a large tablecloth for Stratton House, the Ferrum College president’s residence, and a new bedspread for its guest room that he delivered this month. “For more than half a century, Dr. William Wray has exemplified the enduring spirit of Ferrum College,” said President Mirta Martin. “Through his artistry, storytelling, and dedication to preserving traditional crafts, he inspires us all to honor our heritage while sharing it with the next generation. His presence at the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival embodies passion, perseverance, and community—values that have guided him from his student days at Ferrum College and continue to inspire all who meet him.”
At a football game on October 4 and during Homecoming Weekend October 10-12, Dr. Wray spoke to College staff members about how much he loves his memories of his student days. Praising his religion and music professors and librarian, he remembers taking a religion course in Schoolfield Hall and playing the big organ when it was the chapel. The Reverend C. P. Minnick, who taught religion, had an office where the theatre lighting booth is now, and Dr. Wray lived in the men’s dormitory, John Wesley Hall, in a room that is now the president’s office. He described a dance held in the gymnasium below the chapel, but says he studied in the library during the dance.
Dr. Wray’s most dramatic memory is from his senior year, when he stepped out the back door of Schoolfield Chapel and saw two coffins being lifted out of the ground. Decades later a college official told him that the bodies were moved to the cemetery at St. James Church. Right outside the back door of Schoolfield are two gravestones of students who died while in college, Lazaro Ravelo from Cuba, in 1938, and Edmunds Cers, 1950, whose family was from Latvia.
Different stories have circulated about where the bodies were left while these markers remain behind Schoolfield Hall. Since Dr. Wray’s eyewitness account became known to current staff this month, research continues on this mystery. Construction was occurring around the campus when Dr. Wray graduated in 1961, as modern buildings were being constructed and later the addition of Adams Lake and Wiley Drive changed the landscape behind Schoolfield Hall.
After he described some of the chapel furnishings that he cleaned and polished, Assistant Professor of Music and Theatre Emily Blankenship-Tucker added William Wray into the script of Faith of Our Fathers. She finished the script that Professor Emeritus Rex Stephenson had started before he died this year, commemorating the centenary of Schoolfield Hall; it was performed during Homecoming Weekend on October 12 with junior Django Burgess playing William Wray in a brief scene, telling the president how he earned his way through school by cleaning and then by playing the organ. The photo below shows the real William Wray and the actor meeting briefly during Homecoming Weekend. When an unnamed student in an earlier decade says in the play that his teachers “are the wisest people I have ever known,” that is another snippet from Blankenship-Tucker’s talk with Dr. Wray.
His incredible output of crocheted goods might give the impression that Dr. Wray spends most of his time with yarn and crochet hooks, but Blankenship-Tucker called him a Renaissance man as he discussed his varied interests and experiences. After attending Ferrum Junior College, he finished his undergraduate degree and earned an M.S. at Radford University, then an Ed.D. at Georgetown University, and a special fellowship enabled him to pursue a Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles.
Dr. Wray plays the organ at Lawrence Memorial United Methodist Church, and previously played for Mill Mountain Theatre when it was still up on Mill Mountain in Roanoke. He has had an antique business and reminisced about treasure-hunting with the late Tony Giesen, a Ferrum College mathematics professor who donated the collection of American brilliant cut glass that is on display in Franklin Hall.
Dr. Wray also worked in counseling and teaching at the elementary and college level. He taught at Callaway Elementary School in the 1970s and remembers the first performance of the Jack Tale Players there in 1975. When he saw the wonderful letter written by a fourth-grader after that first performance on December 11, which is now in the archival murals displayed in Schoolfield Hall, he said he knows Tammy Brubaker (now Tammy Knicks) and he taught her in the sixth grade.
During Homecoming Weekend Dr. Ray also met senior Scout Lynch, who sells her own crocheting at different venues such as the Ferrum Farm and Craft Market. After she saw the intricate detail on the bedspread he was carrying and they had a lively chat about crochet hook sizes and techniques, Lynch said, “It was encouraging to meet someone who is so adept at crocheting. I remembered that I had seen his work in the chapel. He is so talented and it was an honor to meet him.” No doubt Dr. Wray will meet other new friends and admirers at this year’s folklife festival on October 25.
Click here for details about the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival and advance tickets.
