As mentioned in my “Back in the day…” post from the beginnings of this website, I lived and died with the Dallas Cowboys when I was a kid. There’s nothing like Your Team when you’re young, and there never will be again if you lose touch.
One of my iconic memories of Texas Stadium of that era, along with the cheerleaders and Tom Landry’s fedora, was a crazy guy on the sidelines or in the stands, exhorting Cowboy fans. I remember it being rare for the television camera not to find him several times a game, celebrating a good play or making a face at a bad call from the refs (where bad meant any that went against the Cowboys). He never failed to put a smile on my face and made my already heavily invested involvement that much more meaningful.
His name was Wilford Jones, but everybody knew him as Crazy Ray. Even after moving away, both literally and figuratively, I never forgot him.
While I’m sure the guy who plays the new “Official Mascot” Rowdy is a fine, upstanding citizen in real life, he will never compare to an energetic mad man whom I loved just about as much as the guys on the field. Crazy Ray was the physical embodiment of all the emotional waves I was feeling as a fanatic kid. (And don’t tell a kid his emotions aren’t real or important. They’re just as real and momentous, maybe moreso, as any he’ll deal with in later life. :)
Mr Jones passed away yesterday after a long battle with various illnesses. His family had set up a website last year — “savecrazyray.com” — where fans could make donations to he and his wife, Mattie, in order to offset their mounting medical and other bills. I would expect that help will still be of great use, even now.
Good bye, Crazy Ray, and thank you for cheering for all of us. I know you’ll be watching the games through the hole in the roof, just like everybody else up there, and cheering on generations of Cowboys (and their fans) for years to come.
