Well, the University Board had a rather large Committee that was chaired
by Victor Bryant. There were nine members of it. From time to time I did
some staff work for them. They got interested in President Stewart at
West Virginia. They had three names they were looking at. One was the
dean of the college at Yale, Dr. Devane. He'd became Mr. Bryant's
obvious choice. He wanted to move on and get Dr. Devane to move in. It
developed into a contest between those who felt that bent, and those who
felt more administratively public oriented people, which is Mr.
Carmichael's accent. He won. And Mr. Gray became President. He had been
here at the school as an undergraduate, of course. And led his class
here. And at Yale in the law school. He made the highest score in any
recruit made in the United States Army, in that competition in World War
II. Enlisted as a private. When he came here, he had been Secretary of
the Army. His heart was just where it should be. He was totally
committed to the place, as was his family. And I've never known anybody
who worked harder at trying to learn how to be a college president, than
did he. The decision process within an institution was not anything like
he'd ever experienced before anywhere. Because here it's persuasion.
Rank, authority, those things really don't make any difference. If you
want to be an effective university president, you have to lead people
into decisions, and help them see what the options are, and hope that
you see it together. And he became very unhappy about this. He didn't
seem to think anything was moving. But then he hit on the idea that we
would have a State of the University Conference. And we'd talk about:
Where are we? What do we need to do? And, Where are we going? And he got
some very strong people to head those groups. Dr. Howard Oldham, for
example, was the first, I believe, the very first Chairman of the very
first one. And Mr. Gray would work hard at getting some very prominent
figures to come and talk. We'd bring the representatives together from
each campus, and really worked at it. The companion to that was his
pretention of Cresap, McCormick and Pagett, to do this big, thorough
going management study, which got into some arguments with the
faculty's, because they didn't want to see this kind of thing happen. I
don't think they ever really understood what Mr. Gray had wanted to
achieve. Always fearful of structure, in those days. And I think some
were afraid of him, because he represented big business, big government,
bureaucracy. He was not a man who came up through the academic ranks to
be President. And before he really had solidified what he'd set out to
do, Mrs. Gray died. And that was just an utterly devastating thing to
have happened. Because he had young sons. And I used to go down and get
those son's, and take them to basketball games, for them night after
night. Because, he was not physically strong in those years. He'd always
come up with all kinds of pulmonary problems. And he smoked an awful
lot, and I don't think he ever got that behind him. But, I am devoted to
him because I think several things
Page 8that must be said
about him. He did bring administrative order into the University. He did
try to have the University look at itself critically, and it did. He was
the, he helped Mr. Carmichael substantially, with that adding the public
television, because the President had to. He gave form to University
development, as you know it today. He raised the money to create the job
positions for chief of development, or, they did for the Annual Giving
Programs. He raised those dollars himself, because I remember quite well
what he did. And it was on and on. Things that don't have a lot of
public appeal, but are terribly essential to the on-going University.
But, he then, somewhere along in there, I can't remember which campaign,
which vacancy it was, but he was, they contemplated looking at him to be
appointed the United States Senate, but he said he didn't want to be
considered. And then later, after he had been here four years, a vacancy
arose again, and he asked me to meet with him one day, and he said, "If
anybody should ask, I'm willing to talk with them, but I'm not seeking
anything." And he said the same thing to Mr. Carmichael. So, Mr.
Carmichael came and got me, and said, "Let's sit down and talk about
this. What do you think this means?" And, well, at that time Mr.
Carmichael's classmate, Governor Umstead, was in office. So I said, "I
think you should go and talk to the Governor about this. If you want my
opinion." He did. And the Governor Umstead reminded Mr. Carmichael that
Mr. Gray had voted for a Republic, and that ended the chapter of any
further discussion about Mr. Gray being considered for a Senatorial
appointment, the second time. But he had then got an invitation to come
back from the present, to come back and head a particular program, and
it was after his wife Jane had died, and he just knew his enthusiasm for
this area had ended. And it was a painful thing for him, because he was
basically, one of the finest people I've ever known. A man who, with a
sense of commitment and dedication to this job, was just enormous. Very
contagious. And I don't think there was a day, in four years of working
with him, wasn't a day that we didn't stay twelve hours, at least. And
he would go back to Washington on assignments on particular Commissions,
and I'd try to keep things moving from Monday to Thursday. And he'd come
back on Friday and that meant we worked Saturday and Sunday. So it was
working seven days a week, in those days.