Tuesday, May 5, 2026
Remember Art Raynes, A Man I Will Always Admire
One night around 15 or so years ago I went to dinner at The Station Restaurant in downtown Bernardsville, New Jersey. A friend of mine who lived in Basking Ridge named Art Raynes invited me out. It was the first time this happened.
He had been telling me in previous months how much he appreciated the opinion and letter to the editor articles I had been writing for the Bernardsville News. He supported my writing, uplifted my spirits, made me think that maybe writing those articles was having an impact on peoples’ lives.
Art was and still is the biggest fan of my writing of anyone I have known. Consistently, he told me he liked my latest piece of work. You would have to be a writer to understand how invigorating and infrequent those positive comments are. You simply don’t know the vast majority of the time if what you write matters at all, if anyone anywhere is reading it.
Art let me know it mattered to him.
Art read books – a lot of books. If he recommended one, you were wise to read it because he had exquisite taste. He recommended back then that I read a book called The Tender Bar. So I did. It became then – and still is – the best book I have read in the past 20 years, maybe ever.
It’s about a young boy growing up in broken home on Long Island, New York. He had very little going well in his life. His Dad had abandoned him and his Mom.
But his uncle noticed the boy, around the age of 10, had a natural flair for writing. So the boy increased the volume of his writing and reading of books. In a long shot achievement, he got accepted to Yale University and kept chasing his desire to become a writer.
The autobiographical memoir is evidence that his efforts paid off. Hollywood made a movie based on the book. The author, J.R. Moehringer, reached a literary mountain top so few writers do.
The point is Art knew a moving and powerful story when he read one, and he understood what would move a writer.
I remember back then during a Somerset Hills YMCA Swim Team Banquet he was honored for his enormously impactful leadership of the YMCA’s “Saturdays in Motion Program” to help special needs kids. He didn’t want any credit, though he richly deserved it. His wasn’t false modesty; it was authentic modesty.
Saturday after Saturday after Saturday, for countless years, he arranged for these kids to enjoy swimming in the pool. Often he would bring in local athletes from the YMCA teams and Rutgers to help.
One of those athletes was my daughter. It was so much appreciated to hear what Art would say about her, how good she was interacting with those kids. But Art kept the nice words coming constantly.
He used to drive those swimmers to practices. Repeatedly he would mention to me how impressed he was that my daughter would be reading books on the way to practice.
I don’t think Art said this just to be nice to me, to make a Dad feel good and proud about his daughter. I think Art said these things because he really felt them in his heart. This man was authentic, a mountain of goodness.
If you were a reader, Art was impressed. If you were a giver and nice person, Art was impressed. If you volunteered your time, Art was impressed. He was into being good.
But he never talked much about himself, how what he did with his life was so impressive to others. Art gave his life in service to other people. He wasn’t caught up in power and his own professional status. Not a bragger, not annoying; no, easy to get along with.
He wasn’t selfish. He was a nice man, a gentle soul, and enthusiastic fan of books and ideas and thinking and figuring out what’s going on in the world and why life is the way it is.
Eight years ago, which feels like 18 for some reason, I moved away from Bernardsville after raising my three kids with my wife there for some 20 years. I have many happy memories of the people I met there.
There is one guy I especially remember.
It’s Art Raynes, who recently passed away.
Hearing this I started thinking about what a nice man he was, how much I liked and admired him. I thought how special it would be for any of us to pass on and the first thing a friend remembers is how good they were, how humble, how personable.
Art did that for me and I’m sure for so many others.
He was the best of Bernardsville and Basking Ridge.
