Elmon T. Gray

Elmon Taylor Gray (May 1, 1925 - September 27, 2011) was a Virginia lumberman, real estate developer, philanthropist and Democratic member of the Senate of Virginia from Waverly, Virginia.^[1][2]

Early and family life

Elmon Gray was born on May 1, 1925 to Garland (Peck) Gray and his wife Agnes Elizabeth (Aggie) Taylor. He attended segregated public schools, graduating from Waverly High School on the day of the Battle of the Midway, and began studies at the Virginia Military Institute in 1942. He left VMI in 1944 to join the U.S. Navy as an ensign, and served on a minesweeper in the South Pacific until his discharge in 1946. He then returned to VMI and received his bachelors degree in 1948.^[3] In 1990, he received an honorary degree from his alma mater.^[4]

He married Pamela Spencer Burnside, and they had two sons (Bruce Burnside Gray and Garland Gray II) and a daughter (Kathryn Taylor Gray) who survived their parents, as did five grandchildren and his two sisters and stepsister.^[5]

Career

Upon returning from World War II and graduating from VMI, Gray joined his father in the family lumber business, Gray Lumber Company, based in Waverly. He became its president in 1953, and in the following decades expanded its operations into real estate development in the Richmond suburbs. In 1992, as he retired from his part-time position in the Virginia Senate as described below, Gray Land & Timber Company sold substantial portions of the remaining timberland, and exchanged them for apartment rental properties, becoming GrayCo (which Elmon Gray headed until his death). He was also active with the Virginia Forestry Association (president 1969-71), the Reforestation Advisory Committee (1971) and the Ruritans. Gray also served on several board of directors, including on the Bank of Waverly, James River Bankshares, First and Merchants National Bank, Virginia Electric Power Company and Universal Leaf Tobacco Company.

Gray also invested in his passion, thoroughbred horseracing. Although Virginia approved pari-mutual racing in 1988, he and his consortium of investors were unable to secure regulatory approvals for a horse track in Hampton Roads.

Active in philanthropic causes, Gray especially favored those with educational missions. He served on the VMI Board of Visitors from 1956 (and as President from 1964-66), as well as with the Sussex County School Board (1963–72), John Tyler Community College (1965–72), the University of Richmond (Board of Trustees 1969-73) and Elon University(Board pf Trustees 1990-1999).^[6] He also served on the vestry of his local Episcopal Church (having been converted from his grandmother's Congregational Church to Christ Episcopal Church Waverly by his wife) and was a Mason.^[7] Gray also helped raise money for the Boy Scouts of America, Virginia Historical Society, Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts and Technology, Stuart Hall, the National D-Day Memorial at Bedford and the Southeast 4-H Center.

In 1971, his father decided to retire from his part-time Senatorial seat, as his longtime Southside district underwent a major reorganization. Elmon Gray succeeded to much of his father's 6th Senatorial District, now renumbered the 16th Senatorial District, and served five four-year terms.^[8]

In the Senate, Gray led efforts to improve higher education, and also thwarted efforts to curb abortion rights. He also led efforts to establish Martin Luther King's birthday as a state holiday, and protected the Southside economy, including truckers and gasoline retailers. Gray was a proponent of a Bridge across the James River to replace the Jamestown Ferry but the bridge was vehemently opposed by residents of a nearby upscale waterfront residential community and historic preservationists who were concerned that a bridge would adversely affect the historical, environmental and visual characteristics of the Jamestown area and the plan was ultimately defeated when the Commonwealth Transportation Board unanimously killed plans for the span.^[9]

Gray announced his retirement from the Senate upon receiving a prostate cancer diagnosis,^[10] and expecting major redistricting following the 1990 census (which also affected his friend and fellow Senator Howard P. Anderson of Halifax). Shortly before retiring from the Senate, Gray helped persuade Sussex officials to consider allowing a large regional landfill to open in the county as a revenue-raising opportunity. Gray then sold 700 acres of his timberland at $4,415 an acre, for a total of $3.1 million for the site of the landfill which drew the ire of many of his constituents who who didn't want this massive garbage dump in their backyard. At a public hearing in 1991 on the proposal to open it the landfill, more than 700 people showed up at the Sussex County courthouse to oppose the plan.^[11] Gray became increasingly unpopular in Waverly and Sussex county due to his support of the landfill. A local preacher stood in front of his congregation and referred to Gray as "the enemy" and landfill opponents compared him to Saddam Hussein at a protest against the landfill.^[12]

Even in political retirement, Gray continued to lobby for a Jamestown-Surry bridge, for new economic development in Sussex and to keep women out of his alma mater, Virginia Military Institute.

"I never thought that any self-respecting girl would want to go there", he said of VMI and the lawsuit that would have required the all-male, state-sponsored military school to admit women. "Thank God the first phase went in our favor, but this thing is a long way from over", Gray said in 1991, referring to the possibility of appeals of the court's decision against allowing women into the school.^[13] The lawsuit was ultimately appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court who ruled against VMI. After defying a Supreme Court order for three months, the governing board of Virginia Military Institute ultimately voted 9 to 8 to admit women in 1996, transforming the nation's last single-sex state supported school into a coed institution.^[14]

After leaving the Senate Gray moved from Waverly to Jordan Point in Prince George, and in his later years lived in Richmond. Gray survived his cancer diagnosis by decades, his friend Sen. Anderson by more than a decade, and his beloved wife by nearly a year.

Death and memorials

He died on September 27, 2011, about two and a half years after receiving VMI's Harry F. Byrd Jr. Public service award in March 2009. His funeral was conducted by Rev. David Anderson, son of his late friend Sen. Howard Anderson.^[15] Elmon Gray is buried with his mother, father and wife in the family plot at the Waverly cemetery.^[16] VMI has his papers, awards a scholarship in his name, and named its athletic stadium jointly after Gray and fellow alumnus Minor.^[17][18]At the time of his death he was a member of Merchant's Hope Episcopal Church in Prince George.^[19]

References