Raymond Manieri Jr.

A lover of history, animals, civic design and eccentric American ephemera, Raymond Edward Manieri Jr. died from complications of Parkinson’s Disease on November 23, 2025, in Beaufort, N.C. He was 77.

Born December 18, 1947, in Greensboro, N.C. to Donna Lewis Urban and Raymond Manieri, Ray attended public schools in Greensboro, graduating from Walter Hines Page High School, where he lettered in swimming. An accomplished athlete, Ray was also a regular on the links at Greensboro Country Club, where he learned the game his mother loved.

He followed his interest in history to a degree in the subject at North Carolina State University. Ray was a legacy brother in the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity at N.C. State, a meaningful institution in his mother’s family where he would later return to earn a master’s degree in history.

After college, Ray, most at home with his own thoughts, traveled the Appalachian Trail alone. He briefly served in the United States Navy before beginning a long career as a city planner.

It was in his hometown of Greensboro where Ray met the love of his life, Elizabeth (Betsy) Godwin at church. The two would soon marry in 1983 and started their family when they welcomed son John Michael in 1985. Daughter Elizabeth Lewis joined the family when she entered the world in 1988. The Manieri family followed Ray’s work from Virginia to Arkansas and back to North Carolina, where Ray and Betsy permanently settled in Mount Airy in 1988.

With Ray working for the city and Betsy in the local public schools, the couple stayed busy shuttling between John Michael’s and Elizabeth’s athletic and academic events, and caring for the many family pets, whom Ray adored like children.

When not busy parenting or city planning, Ray, who had a cutting wit and curious mind, consumed history books and documentaries, feeding his fascination with everything from Civil War-era American history to whimsical searches for hidden treasure off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Ray wrote a 1977 work entitled “The Search for the Fortuna,” which posited that a Spanish ship had sunk off the coast of North Carolina in the middle of the 18th century. Several months before his passing, archaeologists in North Carolina announced that they felt they had discovered four shipwrecks off the coast of southern North Carolina, including the Fortuna.

The family lost Betsy, its anchor, suddenly in 2019 and Ray spent his last several years under the care of professionals in Beaufort and Swansboro, where he was visited regularly by his sister, Donna, and Betsy’s brother, John Godwin. While Ray’s time on earth as a grandfather was short, nothing in his life ever lit up his eyes like the sight of his three granddaughters.

Ray was preceded in death by his wife, Betsy Manieri; parents, Donna Urban and Raymond Manieri; his step-father Bill Urban and is survived by son, John Michael Manieri, his wife, Katherine Plotnick and their daughter, Chloe Plotnick; daughter Elizabeth Manieri-Odam, her husband, Matthew Odam, and their daughters, Rose Manieri-Odam and Birdie Manieri-Odam; and sister, Donna Manieri.

Condolences and life tributes may be sent to the family at www.noebrooks.net

Arrangements by Noe-Brooks Funeral Home & Crematory of Morehead City, NC.