Background
Bowman Gray was born in what was then Winston, North Carolina to Wachovia co-founder James Alexander Gray and the former Aurelia Bowman.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Bowman Gray
Edit ProfileCareer
He left school the following year to become a clerk at Wachovia. In 1895, he began working at R. J. Reynolds as a salesman. In 1912, Gray moved his family to Winston to take up his new position of vice president and director of R. J. Reynolds, picked by Reynolds himself to head the company"s finance division.
In 1924, he was promoted to president of the company to succeed William Neal Reynolds, and in 1932 he became the chairman of the board of directors.
Gray"s brother James Gray, Junior. would also become president of Richard Joshua Reynolds. Two years after moving to Graylyn, Gray died of a heart attack while vacationing with his family aboard a ship off the coast of Norway.
He was buried at sea. Gray donated to philanthropic causes in the region, many times doing so quietly.
At the time of his death in 1935, he left $750,000 worth of stock in Richard Joshua Reynolds Tobacco Company to be used for a cause beneficial to the community.
Wake Forest College, then located in Wake Forest, North Carolina, eventually agreed to move its two-year medical school and expand it to a four-year curriculum, partnering with North Carolina Baptist Hospital. Bowman Gray School of Medicine opened in 1941. Today, Wake Forest University, Wake Forest School of Medicine and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center are key drivers of the region"s economy and have national reputations.
Years after Gray"s death, Graylyn was donated to the Bowman Gray School of Medicine, where it served as an academic psychiatric hospital facility until 1959.
In the 1970s, parts of Graylyn were used as off-campus student housing. In 1979, the main house hosted the Wake Forest University "German House." There is an underground tunnel connecting the main house to the large guest house (the "French House").
lieutenant was not until 1980, after a fire burned the top floor of the estate, that the president of the university announced the property would be restored to its original condition and used as a conference center. Gray left behind him a legacy of philanthropy.
He donated the property on which the Centenary Methodist Church in Winston would be built in downtown Winston-Salem and contributed to local hospitals and orphanages as well.
At the time of his death, his holdings in R. J. Reynolds alone were valued at $12 million.
Membership
After receiving his primary and secondary education in his hometown, Gray matriculated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the 1890-1891 academic year and was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. The move of the medical school later inspired members of the Reynolds family to lead efforts to bring the rest of Wake Forest College to Winston-Salem, which occurred in 1956.
