Harold Gray; life story (Jim Sheeler obituary)
Hyfler/Rosner
Swan song for a pioneer;
Brush businessman dies at 105, spent last years of his life
getting closer to his family
Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News\ Photos by Steven R.
Nickerson, Rocky Mountain News
The day before he reached his final goal in life, Harold
Gray sat in a hospital wheelchair, preparing for what would
be his last day out.
At 104 years old he was blind, nearly deaf, and could no
longer walk. A few days earlier he had almost died of
pneumonia, but managed to pull through.
"He doesn't say much anymore, but he knows what's going on,"
said his son, Stan Gray, before he entered the hospital room
on Jan. 29, on the eve of his father's 105th birthday.
"He was pretty philosophical yesterday. He told me, 'I've
had a really good life.' He was just . . . summarizing. He
never said anything about (death), but I think he knows he's
in the home stretch."
Sometime around his 100th birthday, Harold Gray set a goal
to live to 105. At the time, nobody knew why.
As it turned out, those last several years were just as
important as all of those that came before. In many ways,
they were the most important of all.
For his first century of life, Harold Gray was known as a
pioneer in the town of Brush, where he started his career
selling Model T Fords and ended up helping to shape the
community as president of several economic development
boards and as an active entrepreneur until he was 93. In the
process of achieving his accomplishments, however, the
business almost always came first.
In those last years of his life - as he neared his goal of
105 - he concentrated on his family in a way he never had in
the past. In the process, he grew closer to his daughters
and grandchildren (and great-grandchildren and great-great
grandchildren). During that time he also found a new
relationship with his only son, for whom he previously never
seemed to have time.
To accompany it all, the man who had never been outwardly
affectionate started to do something nobody expected:
He began to sing.
"None of us had ever heard him sing like that before. It
started right about when he turned 100, and the older he got
the more he sang," Stan said. "He drew strength from it, he
told us that."
He mined most of his songs from the early 20th century, many
of them likely sung to him by his mother. Most of them were
something he rarely was: undeniably sentimental.
Inside the hospital room on Jan. 29, Stan Gray adjusted his
father's sport coat and tie. A few blocks away, the
congregation at the Methodist Church prepared for an early
birthday celebration.
"Here's a song for you," Harold said, and began in a
warbling tenor.
"When it's springtime in the Rockies I'll be coming back to
you
Little sweetheart of the mountains with your bonny eyes of
blue
Once again I'll say I love you while the birds sing all the
day
When it's springtime in the Rockies
In the Rockies, far away"
After his son straightened his tie and suit jacket, he
stared ahead through cloudy eyes.
"One hundred and five years old, and I don't look a day over
40," he said, his jowly face managing a smirk.
"One hundred and five years," he said a few minutes later.
"That's enough."
Harold Holton Gray died Saturday morning in Brush. He was
105.
Epic tale of 'Gray Matter'
Harold Gray and his family arrived in the Brush area - about
90 miles northeast of Denver - in 1910, traveling from
Loveland in a horse-drawn buggy.
"At the time when I was born, and history will affirm this,
there were no televisions, radios, credit cards, nor
airplanes: the list goes on," he said in an autobiography he
dictated to his daughter, Carolyn, in 1998, when he was 97
years old.
The manuscript - which he called "Gray Matter" - was written
the way he spoke: clipped and stoic, interspersed with
historical tales of the area, punctuated with deadpan humor.
"When you get to this age you don't have a lot of peers,"
Harold said when he was 103, "but you also don't have to
worry about peer pressure." On his 104th birthday, he joked,
"If I knew I'd live this long, I'd have taken better care of
myself."
That easygoing, straightforward personality - along with a
strong sense of traditional values - earned him the title of
"Dean of the Brush Businessmen" from a local newspaper, and
"Outstanding Pioneer" by the Brush Rodeo Association. At
Brush High School athletic events, where the official mascot
is "the Beetdiggers," the 1918 alum took pride as the oldest
Beetdigger alive.
While he concentrated on business interests that ranged from
car dealerships to a horse racetrack, he rarely had time for
family. Even when he was home, he later admitted, he was
emotionally distant with his children.
Looking back, his daughters just figured that's the way he
was - filled with traditional values, following in the
"grand old man" footsteps of his father, and probably his
father before.
"While we may not have had the contemporary view of constant
closeness and warm fuzzies, he provided a model for us, of
being a genteel, positive, witty man," said his youngest
daughter, Cynthia Gray. "And the function of somebody
modeling those things on a day-to-day basis is a gift. It's
worth a lot."
Though all of his children say their childhood was happy -
with a laugh-track primarily provided by their mother - Stan
Gray would later lament that his father never found time to
toss a ball to him, or attend a single athletic event, that
for the bulk of his life, he was "emotionally absent."
As his father neared his last goal, they spent nearly every
day together, making up for lost time, wondering when it
would finally run out.
A blossom in the wind
At the Brush cemetery, the headstone marked GRAY has been
etched with Harold's name on it for more than a decade -
ever since they buried his wife, Doris, and he swore to
remain nearby.
Occasionally, Harold would return to the cemetery, to talk
with his wife about the times they shared, and times they
missed. During one visit, he sang his favorite song to her -
a 1920s standard called Together.
She's gone from me
But in my memories
We always will be
Together
For his funeral, which was held Wednesday morning in Brush,
he requested they sing a reprise.
As dozens of family members and friends gathered in the
cemetery following the service, they read the inscription on
the back of the headstone - a marble marker Harold designed.
The headstone is etched with a picture of the home the
family has occupied since 1927. Underneath, the stone reads
simply, "MEMORIES."
"We're burying a lot of history today," a friend said, as he
stood near two of Harold's daughters, Corinne White and
Carolyn Thornsby.
"We won't forget," Carolyn said.
After most of the mourners left, Stan's daughter, Carrie
Gray, walked to the casket and pulled off a flower.
"Could you get me one, too?" Stan asked, and she handed him
a huge yellow blossom.
In the biting wind, he took the flower, and placed it in his
lapel.
At last, an ability to say the words
Three weeks before Harold died, Stan found the strength to
tell his father something he had never said before -
something that, even two years ago, remained too
uncomfortable to utter.
In 1997, Stan agreed to move in with his father after the
family realized that Harold could no longer live alone.
Though Stan still resented the emotional distance he felt
from his father, he says he never lost his respect for the
old man, and felt an obligation to care for him - a sense of
responsibility he credits to his mother's upbringing.
For the next seven years the two men lived together in the
same home where Harold spent nearly 80 years. As Harold's
sight and mobility waned, Stan wound up providing care. He
devised innovative ways to get them closer. Some days, they
drove around dusty country roads, listening to Rockies
baseball games. Some evenings, they drove to a special point
on the plains to watch sunsets together, with Stan
describing the colors for his blind father.
Still, in 2004 he admitted, "We're good friends. We're not .
. . we're not affectionate in any way . . . There's no bond
of brotherhood.
"I know this sounds hard, but we're not close."
Two years later, just before his father reached his final
goal in life, a few days before that 105th birthday, Stan
reached a goal of his own.
By then, he had continued to grow closer to his father. Even
after a nasty fall put Harold in a nursing home in 2004 Stan
continued to visit, occasionally even bringing a bottle of
beer to split between the two of them.
Then one night two weeks ago, as his father lay weak in the
hospital, he realized he had something to say.
"I wondered, 'How much is it going to hurt to tell him?' "
he said. "But those three words, you have to mean it and
feel it before you say them . . .
"So I finally said it, for the first time in my life. I
finally got the guts up and told him that I loved him."
Inside the old home on Everett Street, he looked down at the
table, and smiled.
"He told me he wanted to thank me. And he said he'd had
loving thoughts about me, too."
The 76-year-old shook his head.
"I wondered so long about how hard it would be to say that,"
he said. "And you know what?
"It was easy."
One more song before parting
Harold Gray's final birthday celebration began the same
place his funeral would take place 12 days later: at the
Brush United Methodist Church - a building he helped
construct.
Though he continued to recover from a bout with pneumonia,
he insisted on traveling to the church to see the newest
addition, an elevator to make it wheelchair-accessible.
As he arrived, church members held the elevator door for
Harold, saving him the inaugural ride.
When the elevator door opened to the church's community
room, he was greeted with strains of Happy Birthday and a
lapful of greeting cards.
"I am honored," he said. "I feel privileged."
After returning to the hospital that day, Stan placed a
piece of pumpkin pie - another birthday request - on the
nightstand.
"All right, Dad, we'll be heading off, now."
"One more song," his father said,
As Stan and the nurses gathered around, he began again:
"There are smiles that make us happy,
"There are smiles that make us blue,
"There are smiles that steal away the teardrops,
"As the sunbeams steal away the dew
"There are smiles that have a tender meaning,
"That the eyes of love alone may see . . .
As he tried to finish the song, Harold's eyes glassed over
and his voice cracked, unable to finish the last verses:
"And the smiles that fill my life with sunshine
Are the smiles that you give to me."
Stan bent over to his father's ear.
"That's all right, Dad," he said, as he turned to leave.
"That sounded real good."