Ray Tumbleson Obituary

Dr. J Ray Tumbleson, 88, a longtime resident of Ashland, Ore., passed away Tuesday, June 29, 2010, at his home in Woodstock, N.Y.

A memorial service for J. Raymond "Ray" Tumbleson, the founder of Rogue Opera and a long-time member of the Southern Oregon University music faculty, will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 17, in the lobby of SOU's Music Building.

Tumbleson was worked at SOU from 1963 to 1983. In 1976, he founded the Rogue Valley Opera Association, an independent not-for-profit organization based in Medford.

Now known as Rogue Opera, the organization presented "The Marriage of Figaro" in May. The company dedicated the opera production to Tumbleson and sent him a DVD recording of the performance, a board member said.

Tumbleson was born in 1922 in Sac City, Iowa. He entered the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., in 1939, but left to join the Army in World War II. After the war, he moved to Los Angeles and resumed undergraduate studies at UCLA. He also toured with the Savoy Opera Company of San Francisco. While touring, he met Treva whom he married in 1949.

In the 1950s Dr. Tumbleson performed on live radio and TV shows, including those headlined by Tennessee Ernie Ford and Perry Como. He received a masters in music education from Columbia University and a doctorate from the University of Southern California.

Tumbleson staged a variety of operettas and musicals during his tenure at SOU and he served as musical director for the First Presbyterian Church in Ashland for more than thirty years. He moved from Ashland to Woodstock in 2004 to be close to his children after his wife died.