McGladrey & Pullen mourned the death of retired partner Ray Krause, who spent about four decades with the firm.
Krause retired as the firms national director of accounting in 2004. He started as a staff accountant in the Davenport, Iowa, office of McGladrey, Hansen & Dunn in 1968. He later became an audit and accounting specialist and was promoted to partner before moving to the Cheyenne, Wyo., office. At the time of the McGladrey Hendricksen Co. merger with A.M. Pullen Co. in 1984, he was a partner in McGladreys Greensboro, N.C., office, and joined the national office of audit and accounting in Bloomington, Minn., in 1985.
His successor at McGladrey, national director of accounting Jay Hanson, conveyed the news of Krauses untimely death to Accounting Today.
Ray died unexpectedly yesterday, wrote Hanson. He was on vacation in Orlando with his nine-year-old grandson doing what he lovedvisiting Disney World.
Before his retirement six years ago, Ray practiced in a number of locations, including a long stop in the national office as national director of accounting. He retired as partner in 2004 but continued to work for the national office part-time in Rockford, Ill.
During his long career, he served in a number of professional standard-setting groups, including the AICPAs Accounting Standards Executive Committee, the Financial Accounting Standards Boards Emerging Issues Task Force, and on the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council.
Ray is best remembered for being the consummate professional and his easy-going style. He was very well respected in the accounting profession. Comments coming in from those that knew him include: Ray was one of the true gentlemen of the accounting profession, and Ray was about as fine a human being as there is.
He was a great mentor to many colleagues in the national office. His style of giving his complete attention to whomever he was talking to, providing understandable explanations for complex topics, probing deeply for all the facts, and his uncanny ability to help draw a conclusion with full understanding will be greatly missed. Ray could convey the message to someone that they were getting to the wrong conclusion with such delicacy that you didnt even feel it, and felt good about the answer. He knew many of the back stories about how and why some of the most complex accounting standards came about, which is often important to understand what they mean.
Ray will be greatly missed by his daughter, son, four grandchildren and other family and friends. McGladrey and the accounting profession have also suffered a great loss.
