Background
Gray was born on April 15, 1906, in Guttenberg, Iowa, the only son among three children of Otis Elmer Gray and Bertha Hagensick.
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Harold Edwin Gray
Edit ProfileEducation
Gray graduated from Elkader High School in Elkader, Iowa, and in 1923 entered Iowa State University. He left in 1925 to join the U. S. Army Flying Cadet Corps and received flight training at Brooks and Kelly airfields, near San Antonio, Texas. The following year Gray entered the University of Detroit, where he studied aeronautical engineering, supporting himself by designing airplanes. He left without a degree in 1928.
Career
Gray went to work for Ford Motor Company, which had recently entered the airplane business with its famous trimotor. In the course of his duties he met several Ford customers then entering the airline business. One of these was Sky View Airlines, a Miami-based operation that offered pleasure and charter flights. Within a few months Gray left Ford to become a pilot for Sky View, flying vacationers and honeymooners over Niagara Falls for $5 each. He was later transferred to the company's headquarters, where most of his work involved charter flights. While in Miami, Gray socialized with employees of the young Pan American Airways, which was led by Juan Trippe. At the time Pan American was flying two small Fokker passenger planes on a route from Miami to Key West and Havana. But Trippe, who was to become a leading figure in the American airline business, had much wider ambitions. Even then he planned to transform Pan American into the national flag carrier. In March 1928, Gray left Sky View to join Pan American, flying its new route between Brownsville, Texas, and Mexico City. During the 1930's, Gray helped plan and establish routes between the United States and Central and South America. In 1934, he qualified as a pilot on the new transoceanic Clippers. From 1937 to 1939 he conducted survey flights to Bermuda, Ireland, England, the Azores, Portugal, and southern France. In 1939, Gray commanded the Yankee Clipper on its initial airmail flight between the United States and the United Kingdom. Two years later, he flew the Capetown Clipper nineteen thousand miles between New York and Leopoldville, Belgian Congo. By then he was a senior pilot who also trained newcomers. Trippe considered him too important to the organization to continue flying, and he informed Gray that he would soon be moved to management. During World War II, Gray worked on projects with the army and navy, and served as operations manager for Pan American's Atlantic Division. He became manager of the Pacific-Alaska Division in 1949, and in 1952, vice-president of the Atlantic Division. The following year Gray was promoted to executive vice-president of that division, a post he held until 1960. When the Atlantic and Pacific-Alaska divisions were merged in 1960, Gray was named executive vice-president in charge of the Overseas Division. In 1964, at the age of sixty-five, Trippe stepped down as president. He became board chairman and chief executive officer, and the board named Gray his successor as president. Gray had a reputation for being a capable administrator. He had his own agenda for Pan American that involved closer relations with the federal government than those sought by Trippe, who in his last years had clashed with the Kennedy administration. Gray worked to prevent the resulting ill will between the Kennedy administration and Trippe but failed to do so. Soon thereafter, Gray campaigned for a fourth jetport for the New York metropolitan area, to relieve congestion and alleviate jet noise. In 1965 Pan American instituted a global jet freighter program. In 1965 Gray placed the first orders for the new 747 airliners. Despite his successes, Gray was constantly troubled by Trippe's second-guessing and the internecine bickering Trippe engendered. His differences with Trippe continued, and rumors flew that he might be replaced as heir apparent by Najeeb Halaby, Roger Lewis, or some other current or former Pan American executive. But in 1968, Trippe stepped down. At the time Gray was over sixty-two years old, and Pan American executives usually retired at the age of sixty-five. There would be no exception for Gray, who in any case was undergoing cobalt treatment for lymph gland cancer. Gray retired in 1970, after eighteen months as chairman, and was succeeded by Halaby. He died in New York City on December 23, 1972.
Achievements
Membership
President of Pan American World Airways (1964-1968)
Personality
Gray was efficient and cold; one associate called him "a man of a hundred and ten percent integrity - as a person who trusted a slide rule should be. "
Connections
Gray married ExaBell Sublett in 1929. They had two children. In 1965, his older son, Lieutenant Commander Harold Gray, Jr. , was killed in an air strike over North Vietnam.
