2008 Woodie Awards
All eyes on Ray Jagger
Nathan Becker
Issue date: 3/20/08 Section: TruLife
After the University cut the full-time photographer position, Jagger was asked to map out campus vegetation and create a cooling interface for the library.
He became involved with emergency services in Adair County in the early 1990s when he was hired as a dispatcher and jailer for the Adair County Sheriff's Department and volunteered at the Kirksville Fire Department.
He said that when he was in college, he dealt with fires because of his forestry degree, and he said an accident hit home with him when he was young, causing his interest in emergency services.
"My father was killed when our house burned down on him," Jagger said. "And that left me with the realization that you really do need a fire department. At that time, they didn't have fire departments, at least in the rural areas. I became very aware of the whole concept that it's really nice to have a fire department."
Jagger said his time in the emergency business has provided him with several good - and sometimes dangerous - stories to tell. One of them happened when he was trying to get livestock to one end of a burning building so firefighters could squelch the blaze.
"I looked at this great big black cow in there," Jagger said. "[Then] she started pawing the ground, and I realized he wasn't a cow. Directly he comes running over there, ... catches me with his head and flips me out of the pen, and I'm diving for all I'm worth."
Jagger also said he had been on the scene of the plane crash just outside of Kirksville in 2004 that killed 11 as well as helped emergency land a commercial-sized Boeing at the Kirksville airport.
When Jack Magruder became president in 1994, he offered Jagger the job as director of telephone services even though he had no experience in the field.
"But he knew that I was pretty good computers, and ... he wanted me to computerize telephone services," Jagger said. "At that time, they looked up people's names on paper. We got our phone bills in great big huge boxes, and what I did was computerize that."
He became involved with emergency services in Adair County in the early 1990s when he was hired as a dispatcher and jailer for the Adair County Sheriff's Department and volunteered at the Kirksville Fire Department.
He said that when he was in college, he dealt with fires because of his forestry degree, and he said an accident hit home with him when he was young, causing his interest in emergency services.
"My father was killed when our house burned down on him," Jagger said. "And that left me with the realization that you really do need a fire department. At that time, they didn't have fire departments, at least in the rural areas. I became very aware of the whole concept that it's really nice to have a fire department."
Jagger said his time in the emergency business has provided him with several good - and sometimes dangerous - stories to tell. One of them happened when he was trying to get livestock to one end of a burning building so firefighters could squelch the blaze.
"I looked at this great big black cow in there," Jagger said. "[Then] she started pawing the ground, and I realized he wasn't a cow. Directly he comes running over there, ... catches me with his head and flips me out of the pen, and I'm diving for all I'm worth."
Jagger also said he had been on the scene of the plane crash just outside of Kirksville in 2004 that killed 11 as well as helped emergency land a commercial-sized Boeing at the Kirksville airport.
When Jack Magruder became president in 1994, he offered Jagger the job as director of telephone services even though he had no experience in the field.
"But he knew that I was pretty good computers, and ... he wanted me to computerize telephone services," Jagger said. "At that time, they looked up people's names on paper. We got our phone bills in great big huge boxes, and what I did was computerize that."
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