Raymond Gunton Finucane’s Description of his Military Service 

In April 1963 I left Yale University in the middle of my sophomore year to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. On arriving at Parris Island boot camp, we recruits learned that there were opportunities for advancement. After a series of mental and physical tests, I applied and was accepted into the Marine Aviation Cadet program (MARCAD). This was an old program dating back to the dawn of aviation, giving enlisted personnel an opportunity to join the elite cadre of fighter pilots normally reserved for officers.

The MARCAD program offered a better career opportunity than the life of the foot soldier. Dreaming of “Top Gun” and the Blue Angels, I went to Pensacola Naval Air Station to enroll in preflight training. In this three-month school, we studied aerodynamics, mechanical engineering, and aviation technology. As the honor graduate in Preflight, I had first choice of training opportunities, and selected the “Jet Pipeline,” travelling to Meridian, Mississippi, Corpus Christi, Texas, and other bases around the country. Two years later, I graduated from the program as a carrier-qualified jet pilot with the bars of second lieutenant. In 1966, I went to Vietnam for 13 months, flying 180 combat missions in the A4-E Skyhawk. These missions were called “close air support,” involving precision ordnance delivery in close proximity to combat operations.

The Marine Corps experience provided valuable life lessons, inculcating the benefits of hard work, perseverance, and luck. After Vietnam service, I went back to school at Northwestern University, graduating Summa cum laude with a BS degree in mechanical engineering in 1970. In those days there was a new elective course in computer science, where we learned to write programs in Fortran, communicating with the “mainframe” computer with a deck of punched cards.  I was an early devotee of this new technology, but was also trained in classical methods of fluid mechanics at UCLA. After receiving an MS degree, I went on to a rewarding 45-year career in a variety of technical positions in energy and related fields.


Raymond Finucane stands on the left, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in 1968.

Sacramento Valley National Cemetery

This article was published by colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to honor Ray Finucane's many life achievements and work at the lab.

Raymond Finucane 1943-2023:  life and work

Raymond Gunton Finucane passed away at 6:11 PM, on Thursday, December 28, 2023, in Berkeley, California, at the age of 80.  Raymond was born on August 19, 1943, in Kingsport, Tennessee.  Raymond’s birthday, and that of Orville Wright, is celebrated annually by presidential decree as National Aviation Day.   Raymond is survived by the three most important women in his life: his partner Wendy of 24 happy years, his beloved daughter Tamara, and her mother Andrea, his former wife of 33 years.  He is also survived by his three sons, David, Kevin, and baby Travis, and by his eight grandchildren.  He was predeceased by two of ten brothers but not by his two dear sisters.  

Raymond attended numerous notable schools including the Hotchkiss School, Yale University, Northwestern University, and the University of California, Los Angeles, where he attained a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering, with honors. 
  
Raymond served in the U.S. Marine Corps where he attained the rank of Captain.  As part of this service, he fought communism in Vietnam for 13 months, flying 180 combat missions in the A4-E Skyhawk, a single-engine light attack aircraft.  His missions involved prevision ordnance delivery to communist ground combatants while avoiding getting shot down by communist aviators.   

Civilian employment consisted of five years designing high-powered lasers for Hughes Aircraft Co., Culver City, CA;  seven years at Exxon Production Research Co., Houston, TX, inventing and building large ice structures including one 30-acre ice island in the Beaufort Sea of the North Slope AK; and 35 years with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA, where he led complex engineering projects including laser isotope separation; the classified Woodpecker Project, for which his team received the CIA Intelligence Community Seal Medallion for solving “a series of technical problems of enormous complexity resulting in an extremely powerful operational capability” and at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a large-scale inertial confinement fusion facility which achieved fusion on December 5, 2022, bringing the world, in LLNL’s words, into the Age of Fusion.  

Raymond enjoyed many other things besides flying jet aircraft and his jobs.  He loved his children who he greatly helped advance through their formative years of life with a strict, yet sensible, upbringing.  He was a prolific reader, an aficionado of Volkswagens and therefore a skilled auto mechanic; and was also a master carpenter and plumber.  
Raymond’s final 24 years were spent in the happy company of Wendy.  After retirement, they spent many years traveling to exotic places including East Asia, Europe, and Canada, going by train where they could.  At home, they enjoyed the urban life in Berkeley, California, and the arrival of Wendy's grandson and granddaughter.  

Raymond will be missed but the practical contributions he made in the fields of engineering and science will endure.  

A military funeral and burial ceremony will be held for Raymond Gunton Finucane at the Sacramento Valley National Cemetery on January 22, 2024, at 2:30 PM.  A United States Marine Corps Honor Guard will be part of the service.


RAYMOND GUNTON FINUCANE

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