It's appropriate that we talk about Dr. Sally Ray at this time. She is a recognized authority on the airlines' responses to crashes. More about that later. It's interesting to observe Sally when she enters the room at our Rotary Meetings. It takes her 15 minutes to get to her table. She stops by every person she meets and has a pleasant conversation. Frankly she's just a very outgoing friendly person. Not bad for the Chairman of the Communications Department of Western Kentucky University. Sally is also our International Service Director.Sally was born in Mayfield in Western Kentucky. Her dad died when she was 8 and her mom remarried. The family moved to Morehead when she was 12. Sally's Mom was the head of the Nursing Education program at Morehead and her step dad, Col. Arthur Kelly, was head of ROTC. Sally graduated from Morehead's Model High School (Breckinridge High) in 1979. She went to Centre for a year but came back to finish at Morehead. She then got her Masters Degree in Communications from Eastern Michigan University and her Ph.D. from Wayne State in 1988. She taught from 1988 to '90 at UK then at U of L from '90 - '91. She came to Western in 1991 and became Department Chairman in 2000. My son Kenny got his Masters under Sally and she hired him to teach Speech at Western. He loved teaching and is finishing up his Ph.D. and teaching Speech at Florida College in Tampa. He and Sally remain good buds.
Sally published a book in 1999 called Strategic Communications in Crisis Management: Lessons from the Airline Industry. You can click on the title to find it on Amazon. Sally is working on a new book to be titled Aviation Accident Investigation as a Tool for Organizational Learning.
Sally is married to Dr. Roger Vincent who will be the head of Magna's education program. Roger and Sally are sports car enthusiasts. Sally's Step Dad Col. Kelly is a veteran of three wars. He has a book of WWII oral histories called Battlefire also available from Amazon and is linked here.
