Another one of our great old travel film artists has left us. Raphael “Ray” Green died peacefully at age 97 on July 6 at his home in DeKalb, Illinois.

He was holder of several film career firsts: He was the first American to make a travel film in the Soviet Union following Premier Khrushchev’s downgrading of Stalin; the first American to shoot a travel film in the Peoples Republic of China after the demise of Chairman Mao; the first American to make a travel film after World War II in Siberia—from Novosibirsk to the Sea of Japan, traveling much of the way on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Someone said he had seen more of Russia than many Russians.

Ray Green was first introduced to China after the war in 1946 when he joined a White House mission to assess war damage in North Korea and Manchuria (in North China). Ambassador Edwin Pauley’s mission presented its final report to President Truman. In all, Ray visited China nine times in his long film career

A native of Maine, Raphael William Green was born April 15, 1912, the same day the great liner Titanic went down.  He graduated from the Husson School of Business, and taught high school for four years before joining the maritime service in World War II.

For 10 years, he was director-cameraman in the Audio-Visual Department at the University of Minnesota, shooting all the Golden Gophers football games.

He had painted his boss’s house in exchange for a used Bolex 16mm film camera in order to shoot his first travel film in the Soviet Union in 1956. Upon his return, the well-known agent, Edna Stewart, agreed to book him after previewing his raw footage..

Ray was off and running.

He had met the vivacious Jocelyn Johnston on one of his trips to New York. She held a teaching degree and a masters in clothing design, and worked for the Millinery Institute in Manhattan. They were married in 1959 and celebrated their 50^thwedding anniversary last April 2.

Ray and Jocelyn Green

The filmmaking team of Ray and Jocelyn Green was a natural from the start, making friends easily in the relatively small travel film community, turning out productions on Switzerland, Thailand, Hong Kong, Germany, among others.

Some of their career highlights include traveling the Silk Road of China , and filming the famed Terra Cotta warriors of Xi’ian. They made three shooting trips to the Three Gorges Dam site on the great Yangtse River. (Scores of villages were to be flooded by a new lake formed when the dam was completed.) The Greens were also in Hong Kong in 1997 when that island state became part of China.

Travel documentaries, however,  were not Ray’s only forté:

• While at the University of Minnesota he filmed open-heart surgeries by noted heart surgeon Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, inventor of the pacemaker and heart-lung machines. Lillehei’s students, Drs. Bernard and Shumway, made medical history in the field of heart transplants.
• Ray’s educational film, The Faces of China, won an award at the American Film and Video film festival.
• He was invited by Illinois Gov. James Thompson to be the official film cameraman on a state delegation visit to China to establish the first Illinois business office there.

The Greens received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Travel Adventure Cinema Society in 2004. And for years, Jocelyn wrote the popular Travel Adventurers column for this magazine’s printed edition.

Jocelyn reported that Ray was alert for their wedding anniversary and his birthday, but “started going  down hill after that.”

There were no funeral arrangements on Ray’s orders. He was cremated with orders to the mortuary to dispose of the ashes as it saw fit. Ray said he came into this world without fanfare and he wanted to go out the same way.

Besides Jocelyn, he is survived by three sons,  Douglas Edwin, a businessman; Randolph “Randy” Raphael, a freelance artist; Gerald William, a computer programmer; and a daughter,  Ruth Elizabeth Synowic, a senior creative director; and nine grand-children.

Ray always had a knack of making friends wherever he went. He always loved to quote Will Rogers: “A stranger is a friend I haven’t met.”