Ray Holifield

Funeral services for Ray Holifield, 79, of Giddings, are scheduled for 2 p.m. on Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at Phillips and Luckey Funeral Home in Giddings with Doug Tipps officiating. Burial will follow in the Giddings City Cemetery. Visitation will be held on Monday, July 24, 2017 from 7 a.m. until 9 p.m. and on Tuesday, July 25, 2017 from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m. at Phillips and Luckey Funeral Home in Giddings. The family will be present for visitation Monday evening from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. Ray was born in Piggott, Arkansas on October 6, 1937 to Raymond and Hazel Throgmorton Holifield. He graduated from Gideon High School in Missouri in 1955, completed his BS in Education in 1959 at the University of Missouri and his Masters from the School of Geology in 1964. Ray was owner of Holifield Oil, which had its base in Giddings, even though he had oil activities all over the United States and a few foreign countries. Ray formed Ray Holifield and Associates in 1979, changed the name to Holifield Companies in 1984 and then to Holifield Oil in 1996. He was a leader in both of the oil booms (1976 and 1985) experienced in the Austin Chalk and was known as the “genius of the Giddings field.” Ray developed the tools now used to re-enter medium-radius horizontal wells. Memorial contributions can be made to the Gideon High School Alumni Association in Missouri, the University of Missouri Alumni Association, the American Cancer Society or Hospice Brazos Valley in La- Grange which provided assistance in the last 16 months of his life and helped grant his wish to die at home and not in a nursing home. Arrangements by Phillips and Luckey Funeral Home in Giddings.