She loved Newton and her work at The Observer News Enterprise

SYLVIA RAY 1937-2021

Posted

Hickory Daily Record

Sylvia Kidd Ray, a Newton resident and retired managing editor of The Observer News Enterprise newspaper, died at her residence on Sunday after a period of ill health. She was 84.

Ray started her journalism career at the age of 7 at the newspaper with a column titled “My Cats.” A lifetime journalist, she was the managing editor at The Observer News Enterprise for 30 years and wrote a lifestyle column for the Hickory News. She won numerous North Carolina Press Association awards during her tenure and acted as a role-model and mentor for many journalists.

Ray was active in her community as a local historian throughout her life. She authored several booklets of local history and collaborated with Gary R. Freeze on his three volumes of county history, “The Catawbans” and his history of the City of Newton, “She Is Not Yet Finished.”