Dr. John Ellis Gray 1907-2002

Dr. John Ellis Gray was a giant of a man in the history of Lamar University and in the hearts of those whose who knew him. In the truest sense, he was Lamar University, illuminating its past and shaping its future. Gray stood larger than life, yet, in his presence, he made you feel you were the important one. “Dr. Gray had the unique ability of focusing on you,” President James Simmons said.“He was a wonderful man who always made everyone seem so special – that their opinions were important,” said Regina Rogers, whose relationship with the Grays began in childhood and continued into professional life.

“When he was around you, you felt all was right with the world,” said Howard Perkins, director of student publications and a longtime friend. “He never demanded respect. He commanded it.”

“He was the best man I ever knew. He never said an unkind word about anyone,” said Eloise Petkovsek, 91, Gray’s longtime secretary.

John Gray died March 20, 2002, three weeks after his 95th birthday.

“The day before he died, I looked at him and said, ‘You’re a champ among men,’” recalls Rose Nixon, one of Gray’s longtime care-givers. “He was his gracious self.”

Though ill and bedridden, Nixon said. “He never complained. He always had a big smile on his face. He had a marvelous sense of humor. Every day when I told him goodbye, I would say, ‘See you later, alligator,’ and he would say, “After while, crocodile.’”

Gray was, as the Rev. Eldon Reed said at his funeral, “one of the most beloved people ever to walk the streets of this city.” Elvis Mason, W.S. “Bud” Leonard and Paul Pigue, Gray’s son-in-law, delivered eulogies.

“He enriched the lives of everyone who knew him,” said Mason, a 1959 Lamar graduate who worked with Gray at the bank and again when Gray was president and Mason a Lamar regent. “He personified selfless service to others.”

“Dr. Gray was one of the finest gentlemen in the truest sense of the word,” said Leonard, a retired Lamar executive and who met Gray while a student at Lamar. “He was a motivator in that he always made you feel that if he gave you a job to do, nobody else in the world could do it. You never wanted to disappoint him.”

“Whatever came along, in our family or in the community, he handled it on the highest level,” said his daughter, Ann Gray Pigue. “What you saw in his public life, you also saw in his private life.”

John Ellis Gray was born March 3, 1907, in Buckeye, Matagorda County. It was the year Oklahoma became the 46th state, the first daily comic strip debuted, the first electric washing machine cranked up and Pablo Picasso introduced cubism.

The family moved to Beaumont several years later. Here, John met the love of his life, Mary Marine Hahn, when they were 10th-graders at South Park High School. Gray graduated valedictorian in 1923, and he and Mary were members of the first freshman class at South Park Junior College, which grew to become Lamar. In 1925, he was the top male graduate in the first graduating class.

Gray had been a star football player in college and was just 19 when he became head coach at the high school. Attending the University of Texas for one year and two summers, Gray earned a B.A. in government and an M.A. in educational administration. He and Mary wed in 1930. From 1932 to 1939, he served as head coach and athletic director of Lamar College. He also taught government, economics and sometimes math. He was named dean of men and, five years later, in the 1941-42 school year, was named president of Lamar College. He took a two-year leave of absence to serve in the Navy during World War II.
Gray spent a decade championing efforts to make Lamar a four-year, state-supported institution. When Lamar State College of Technology opened its doors Sept. 1, 1951, Gray resigned to begin a 20-year career in banking.

In February 1972, after he retired from First Security National Bank, regents named him president emeritus. “No man in Texas has a more remarkable background in the field of education,” said the late Otho Plummer, then board of regents chairman. Soon after, to Gray’s surprise, regents asked him to return for a second term as president. On June 1, 1972, the Enterprise wrote: “Gray faces the task of bridge-building with a lot going for him: Deep community respect that has reached into all segments of the university, a rare and remarkable love for every brick and blade of grass on the campus, a wide knowledge of the school’s academic needs and the firm belief in the ‘come-let-us-reason-together’ approach.”

Gray led Lamar through a dramatic period of growth and harmony. “Dr. Gray returned to the university at a critical moment in its history,” said John Storey, a Lamar graduate and chair of the Department of History. “There had been a lot of turmoil, and Dr. Gray deserves a great deal of credit for re-establishing a tranquility on campus.”

In honor of his service, three campus buildings – the Mary and John Gray Library, the John Gray Center and Gray Hall – bear his name.
On Sept. 23, 1998, Gray saw past, present and future come together when, in a wheelchair, he attended the rededication ceremony at the original South Park Junior College, inaugurating Lamar University’s 75th anniversary celebration.

“More than anyone else, his life defines what Lamar is and can be,” Maxine Johnston, retired director of the Mary and John Gray Library, wrote in a 75th-anniversary publication. “Gentleman John is for real – knowledgeable, incorruptible and visionary.”

Memories of childhood linger for Ann Gray Pigue. Though growing up the daughter of John and Mary Gray often takes on an unreal quality, the memories are real, and they endure.

She reminisced: “In cold weather, Daddy would put my sister, Jean, on one knee and me on the other and warm us in our bathrobes in front of the fire and tell us a story and then take us to bed. That was a ritual . . .When he was the football coach, the babysitter would keep us at my grandmother’s house across the street. At halftime, they would wrap us up in blankets, and we would get to sit on the fence and watch the halftime shows. We’d watch Daddy bring the team back on to the field, and then we’d go home and go to bed.”

When Ann opted to attend Lamar, it was her decision. And, she said, “It was just so normal,” being a student whose father was president. “I’d be walking across campus with friends, and he’d pass and say, ‘Hello, girls!’ I was another student he was interested in, just as he was interested in everyone.”

Ann and her sister, Jean, were born 13 months apart. “One thing I always admired about Mother and Daddy is that they let us be who we were,” Ann says. Jean Gray Richardson died more than 30 years ago at the age of 40. Mary Gray died in 1996 at age 90.

The Grays are survived by three grandchildren, John Preston, Kathleen Richardson and Kevin Richardson, and four great-grandchildren.

“The thing that affected me most about my parents was that they set such a good example,” said Ann Gray Pigue, now 70. “Theirs was not about talk but about how to be.”

President James Simmons says he has long relied on Gray’s advice and counsel. Several years after he retired, Gray returned to give a speech covering 10 characteristics of a leader. Simmons immediately obtained a copy of the speech. “I use it all the time and give him credit for it,” Simmons said. “You could take all the leadership books on the shelves in my office, and I guarantee you John Gray’s 10 points preceded all of them.”

Gray had been his mother’s tennis coach at Lamar during the 1930s and began his second term as president soon after Simmons joined the faculty in 1970. As director of the marching band, Simmons gained one of his most meaningful memories. “After the game, Dr. Gray would always walk across the field, and tell me and the students how much he enjoyed the performance. It was not a short walk for him and his wife, all the way from the press box. But you could set your clock by it.”

Gray loved students, good stories and good jokes, especially if they were on him. His memory for names is legend. He made it his business to know people even before he met them. History professor John Carroll recalls that on his second day at Lamar, he was surprised when a tall, grey-haired man he had never seen passed him on campus and spoke: “Well hello, John,” said the man, who turned out to be Gray.

“When you met him, he always knew you by your first name, and he was always genuinely interested in how you were,” said Perkins. “Even if he did not know your family well, he remembered their names and asked about them.”

Regina Rogers met Mary and John Gray before she was 10. “My love for them was boundless, and they reciprocated,” she said. “It touches my heart each time I think of John and Mary Gray because of the love they bestowed on everyone, the way they made people feel and the things they did for Beaumont.”
“He did so many things that people never knew about,” said Sallye Keith, who met Gray soon after she came to Beaumont at 1957 to work at the YWCA, where Mary Gray was board president. “For instance, our annex was an old church with an uneven floor. We taught dancing, which was hard to do on a sloping floor. So John Gray saw to it that we got the money to fix it.”

Regina Rogers said: “If there was a single word to describe him, it was ‘gentle,’ with a quiet dignity and humility. He presided, managed and led with gentility. He was a gentle man as well as a gentleman.”

Elvis Mason concluded in his eulogy: “As we say farewell to this remarkable man and our good friend, I will paraphrase one of his familiar expressions, dedicated to his memory. ‘We cannot possibly deserve all that you have done for us, but we can appreciate it, and that we do most sincerely.”