Whitehaven Rugby League club’s popular former chairman Richard Raaz has died at the age of 81.
Known as Dick, he had become involved in Rugby League and the Whitehaven club when he managed the Low Level Waste Repository at Drigg, taking over in 2007.
His major sporting passion had previously been the Denver Broncos but after arriving in West Cumbria he was approached by two consortia aiming to rescue Whitehaven from financial difficulties.
At the time, he said: “Part of my personal approach to life has been to get involved with the communities where I work. That was what I did when I went around the world with the navy and I’ve continued since I retired to work in the commercial world in 1995.
“I’ve been preaching that since I came to Cumbria, so when I was approached to take on this task it would have seemed ridiculous to preach one thing and practise another.”
Paying tribute, the Whitehaven club said he was “a formidable figure and larger than life character during his spell in charge of the club and everyone there have his family and friends in our thoughts at this sad time.”
Raaz, who became a familiar and noisy Havana-chewing presence in the main stand at the Recreation Ground was a big fan of team sports and was attracted to the honesty of Rugby League.
He always said that a game against Salford was the most exciting sports event he’d ever attended in his life.
Whitehaven won that game 26-22 thanks to a stunning hat-trick on debut by Gregg McNally, then a 17-year-old schoolboy.
A US Navy veteran, his civilian career started in Fall 1995 with decommissioning work at DOE’s Hanford Reservation, Washington. He quickly moved to plutonium processing and disposal for the Rocky Flats Closure Site in Colorado.
Towards the end of his career, he was honoured to manage the US nuclear waste geologic repository in Carlsbad, New Mexico and finally the Low Level Waste Repository at Drigg.
In the navy , after graduating from Annapolis in 1967 he served on six submarines including command of the USS Haddo and the USS Georgia.
Five generations of the Raaz family served in the military including his grandfather, father, uncle, brother, sister, nephew, great-nephew and most recently his granddaughter.
He had been battling renal cancer for a while and died at home in Apache Junction, Arizona on Sunday, where he is survived by his wife Jennifer.
