Raymond Ronquillo Jr., engineer who helped design first lunar rover, dies at 81.
BY JOHN POPE | Contributing writer Aug 8, 2020 - 9:30 am
Raymond McCullum Ronquillo Jr., an engineer who helped design and build the first lunar rover, died July 24 at his Harvey home. He was 81.
That electric-powered vehicle, which resembles a high-tech dune buggy, was designed to extend the range that astronauts could explore once they landed on Earth’s closest neighbor in the solar system. The average jaunt for each manned moon mission has been about 20 miles.
The lunar rover is big – it weighs 460 pounds and measures 7½ feet by 10 feet by 3½ feet – but to get to the moon, all of its parts had to be carefully packed into the spacecraft’s lunar module, where every cubic inch counts, and then painstakingly unloaded and assembled after landing.
That was were Ronquillo came in, his daughter Rene Ronquillo said. “He was smart. He knew how things worked.”
Raymond Ronquillo was one of nine Boeing engineers assigned to manufacture ground equipment – the lunar rover, in other words – for the Saturn V rocket, first at the Michoud Assembly Center in New Orleans East and then in Huntsville, Alabama.
This was heady stuff, especially for a man in his mid-20s who had joined Boeing in 1963. “I don’t know if, as a young man, he realized what he was in,” said MaryTheresa Anne “Do-Bee” Plaisance, another daughter. “He was humble, but thrilled to be part of it.”
Years later, she said, “he would tear up when we talked about it. … When we would bring it up, he’d finish the story.”
His name, and those of his colleagues, is on the lunar rover, which is still on the moon. They are also in the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, the Space Needle in Seattle and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Despite this measure of far-flung fame and his lifelong love of travel, Ronquillo turned down an offer of a job in Seattle because he didn’t want to be so far from his family, Rene Ronquillo said.
“He was a family man, through and through,” she said. “He chose to stay in engineering, but he couldn’t fathom going so far from home.”
He was born in New Orleans on Oct. 14, 1938. He graduated from De La Salle High School, which has elected him to its athletic Hall of Fame.
Ronquillo lettered in track and field and football at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. He served in the Army.
He left Boeing in 1971 and worked for several companies until the mid-1970s, when he joined Gulf Engineering, where he worked about 30 years, Rene Ronquillo said.
Working with his son, Raymond McCullum Ronquillo III, he started GIT Services while he was at Gulf, Rene Ronquillo said, and he stayed there after leaving Gulf. GIT Services’ specialties include what is known as non-destructive testing, which is designed to fix defects before they become problems.
Survivors include his wife, Judith Babin Ronquillo; a son, Raymond McCullum Ronquillo III of Baton Rouge; four daughters, MaryTheresa Anne “Do-Bee” Plaisance of Marrero, Beth Ann Williams of Libertyville, Illinois, and Anna Marie Rawle and Rene Monique Ronquillo, both of Harvey; a sister, Mitzi Ronquillo Labadot of Harvey; and 10 grandchildren.
A Mass was said Saturday at St. Martha Catholic Church in Harvey. Burial was in McDonoghville Cemetery in Gretna.
Mothe Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.
(October 14, 1938 - July 24, 2020)