Ray Jacquinot has been active in youth programs in Parsons for more than 25 years, including 15 years as a coach of Babe Ruth baseball. He has also coached Kiwanis soccer, Little League basketball, and basketball at St. Patrick’s school. He was among the originators of the children’s Halloween parade in downtown Parsons and was in charge of the parade for many years. He and his wife Becky would dress in Halloween costumes and walk in the parade with their sons, Christopher and Matthew. Christopher is now 23 years old and Matthew is 18 years old.

He worked with school administrators and the school board to get interscholastic sports restored to Parsons Middle School. He is a member of the Parsons school board and was president of the board during the recent $6.3 million remodeling of the Middle School building. He is a board member of the newly formed Parsons Educational Foundation that seeks to raise funds to strengthen school programs.

For the past two years he has been a Picture Person, visiting the classes of elementary school children, showing pictures of famous paintings and encouraging children to talk about what they see, what the artists may be trying to say, and how the children feel about the pictures.

As a board member of the former Main Street Pride he helped raise funds for the downtown Christmas decorations. Today, as a board member of Downtown Parsons Inc and chairman of that group’s economic restructuring committee, he continues his active involvement in business retention and recruitment.

He is executive vice president for commercial lending and real estate at Commercial Bank and secretary of the bank’s board of directors. He started with the bank in 1977 as a loan officer trainee. While working fulltime at the bank he was a nontraditional student at LCC, attending night classes to earn his associate’s degree. After graduating from LCC in 1980, he received his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Pittsburg State University in 1994.

Ray and Becky met when they were students at LCC and they married in 1978. She graduated from LCC in 1979.