Robins Man Builds His Own Casket

ROBINS - Ray Sullivan knows exactly where his body will spend eternity - in a casket made with his own hands.

"The saying is, you can't take it with you," says Ray, 81, "but I am going to take it with me."

He built the walnut casket from a tree that grew on his neighbor's land. It is six feet long, two feet wide and 18 inches tall. It has eight brass handles, a top held down by screws and a decorative border that is actually 144 tabs, each engraved on the underside with his initials so that mourners can each break one off as a relic.

"I don't know that I've got that many friends," Ray says with a laugh, "but for however many that show up, they can take one."

Ray, who turns 82 on July 31, adds that he shouldn't need the casket any time soon.

"I feel OK, I guess," he says, having been diagnosed with high blood pressure and diabetes in recent years. The Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City takes care of him since he's a veteran of the Korean conflict.

Ray, who was born in Fairmont, Minn., received the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor, for saving his rifle company by blowing up six enemy bunkers, killing 28 enemy soldiers at T-bone Hill 60 years ago June 14.

After returning home in 1953, he continued his carpenter work before going to a trade school in Minneapolis and landing a job in road construction. It was a job in Vinton in 1959, the bypass of Highway 218, that put him in contact with a young waitress at a Vinton cafe that led to him marrying Judy Primrose in 1961. They returned to Minnesota where Ray became a police officer for a short while before going back to finish carpentry. While in Vinton, they'd spent time in Cedar Rapids so decided to move there in 1964.

As a carpenter, Ray's work can be found in houses in Cedar Hills, in the Lost Valley Road area of southeast Cedar Rapids and near Wenig Road NE. He and Judy lived in the southeast quadrant and added to their growing family - five children in all. They moved to this house on an acre in Robins in 1994.

With plenty of land, Ray built a "car barn" for his old cars, including a 1948 Lincoln Continental. They enjoyed the tall trees, mostly oak. When leaf wilt set in, Ray had some of those trees cut and trimmed into nice lumber. And then, one day, a neighbor was having a tree removed.

"Hey Sullivan," the neighbor said, "I'm taking that big walnut tree down. You want the log?"

The "log" ended up being two 12-foot sections. Ray had them cut into lumber that was curing when Judy died in 2009 of cancer. When she was buried in a casket handmade by the Trappist monks of the New Melleray Abbey near Dubuque, Ray got the idea to build his own casket. He checked into regulations and began work, which he finished last year.

Before the huge walnut tree was cut into boards, Ray counted its rings. There were 80.

"This tree is my age," Ray says. "In 1930 this little tree starting growing. I started growing. Eighty years later they converged. We'll be going together."