Duane Raver Jr., a fish biologist who became a noted NC wildlife illustrator, has died
Duane Raver Jr., a fish biologist who was the go-to illustrator for the state’s wildlife programs before retiring and becoming a longtime featured artist at the N.C. State Fair’s Village of Yesterday, died this week. He was 94.
Raver spent up to 12 hours a day painting and talking with people at the State Fair’s arts and crafts show for 35 years starting in 1979. He continued painting even as his health declined; he was working on a fish illustration on a boat paddle four days before he died, according to his obituary.
Raver might have remained in his native Iowa, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in fishery biology in 1949, if a friend had not persuaded him to take a job with a new state agency in North Carolina, the Wildlife Resources Commission.
Though he never had any formal art training, a counselor at Iowa State University had encouraged him to pursue his artistic talent. He couldn’t remember how his bosses in North Carolina learned he could paint, he told The News & Observer in 2010, but he was asked to draw a cover for the commission’s magazine, Wildlife in North Carolina, a few years after he arrived.
That led to requests from fish and game agencies in other states. For years, Raver spent his days working as a fisheries biologist and his nights drawing and painting birds, fish and other wildlife.
He finally went to work for Wildlife in North Carolina in 1960 and served as its editor from 1973 until he retired in 1979. He produced numerous illustrations for the magazine, including about 200 covers.
The year Raver retired was the first he and his wife, Mary, manned a booth at the Village of Yesteryear. Despite the long hours there, he described painting at the fair as “like a vacation.”
“I had to learn to talk to folks while I work, and the State Fair taught me that,” Raver said in 2015, when he was about to make another public appearance at age 87, at the grand opening of the Cabela’s outdoors store in Garner.
Aside from collectors, Raver’s work can still be seen on posters and other publications in North Carolina and other states.
Raver said in 2010 that his proudest accomplishment had been illustrating 150 species of fresh and salt water fish for the reference guide, “Fishes of the Southeast United States,” first published in 1984 and reprinted since then. Accuracy was critical.
“Somebody somewhere may depend on my work to identify a species of fish,” he told The N&O. “Think of how many species of grouper there are.”
Raver is survived by his wife of 68 years and their children, Duane Raver III, Diane Braswell and Jean Raver, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A funeral service will be held at Horne Memorial United Methodist Church in Clayton on Sunday, Feb. 20, at 2 p.m.
This story was originally published February 18, 2022 at 5:26 PM.
