Garland Gray

Despite many demographic changes in Virginia; Sussex and Greenville Counties had been represented jointly in Virginia's House of Delegates since 1879, and the state Senate district had not changed since 1893.

Garland Gray (November 28, 1901 – July, 1977, nicknamed "Peck" after Peck's Bad Boy) was a long-time Democratic member of the Virginia Senate representing Southside Virginia counties, including his native Sussex.

Gray graduated from Waverly High School in 1917 (age 16) and received a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Richmond in 1921 (age 19) and a master's degree in Southern history from Washington and Lee University the following year (age 20).

He was also a Mason, member of the Congregational Church (and taught Sunday School), local Ruritan and Rotary Clubs, and of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity.

He joined his father's Gray Lumber Company business in 1922 and operated small lumber mills in Southampton and Sussex counties from 1922 until 1927, when he was made a partner in the company.

Gray advocated sustainable forestry, planting young seedlings to replace cut timber.

He eventually became chairman of the Board of Gray Products Company.

In 1923 Gray married Agnes E. Taylor of Suffolk.

The couple had four children: Elmon T., Florence E., Agnes E. and Mary Wingate Gray.

Their Surry County summer home, at Swann's Point, overlooked the James River, but was destroyed by fire and not rebuilt.

It is now an archeological site owed by the National Park Service.

Gray began his political career on the county school board (1925-1928), then served on the county Public Welfare Board (1934-1940) and state ports authority beginning in 1935 and becoming its chairman in late 1939 until resigning to assume a seat in the State Senate.

In 1930, the Gray lumber company was one of the first in the South to establish a pension plan for its workers.

Four years earlier, the closing of the rival Surry Lumber Company mills (caused in part by their decades-long failure to replant after cutting) devastated the local economy, and the Sussex, Surry and Southampton Railway established by the same owners went bankrupt in mid-1930, worsening the situation.

Governor John Garland Pollard appointed Gray to a commission to study unemployment insurance, but that proposal did not need to be adopted in Virginia because of its adoption as part of the New Deal.

In 1931, Gray advocated unemployment insurance (and even financed a study for the state).

His cousin "Red" Gray represented Sussex and Greensville Counties from 1938-1942 and also preceded him as president of the national Ruritan Club.

Gray became President of the Bank of Waverly in April, 1941, following the death of his uncle Horace.

That year, the Gray Lumber Company bought 15,000 acres from the failed Surry Lumber Company, in Dendron, Virginia.

Gray also served on the board of directors of the First and Merchants Bank in Richmond.

In November 1941, Peck Gray was elected to the Virginia Senate representing the 6th District (a part-time position), to replace Robert Williams Daniel, who had died in office.

He would serve for thirty years, with only a brief gap during World War II when he resigned citing family business obligations after he bought out his brother's interest in the business, his son left for VMI and military service overseas, and a devastating forest fire broke out during his mother's funeral on April 5, 1943 and burned 12,000 acres of timberland.

Edward Everard Goodwyn of Emporia, Virginia filled his unexpired term.

However, Gray's political stature grew, as he led various campaigns for the U.S.O. and war bonds, liaised with several wartime agencies, and worked with the Fourth Congressional District Democratic Committee.

Widely considered one of the top lieutenants in the Byrd Democratic Organization, Gray was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1944 and 1948.

In 1945, Gray and fellow businessman and state senator Thomas H. Blanton chaired Senator Harry F. Byrd's re-election campaign.

In 1947 Gray announced he would seek the seat left vacant by Goodwyn's retirement, and Sussex County clerk William B. Cocke Jr. (acclaimed with Gray for helping elect Watkins Abbitt to the U.S. Congress the previous year) decided not to run.

Gray promoted pine as a farm product and served as State Ruritan president, as well as national President in 1948-1949.

He also worked with fellow lumber industry officials who also served as state officials, including future governor Thomas B. Stanley of Stanley Furniture and Hugh Camp of Camp Manufacturing Company.

By 1949, the newly elected Senator Gray was also vehemently advocating fiscal responsibility.

Despite his family's northern roots in Delaware, Gray's views on race mirrored those of most of his white constituents in the rural Southside Virginia community he represented.

Beginning in 1952, the Grays lived at the former home on Coppahaunk Avenue in Waverly of his uncle Horace Gray.

His second wife was Frances Bage.

He adopted her daughter, Mary Frances, after their marriage.

Gray was a farmer, industrialist, and later a banker.

A lumber and banking executive, Gray became head of the Democratic Caucus in the Virginia Senate, and vehemently opposed school desegregation after the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and 1955.

Although Senator Harry F. Byrd himself supported Massive Resistance, and preferred Gray over other candidates, the Byrd Organization refused to wholeheartedly support Gray's bid to become the party's gubernatorial candidate in 1957, so J. Lindsay Almond won that party's primary and later the Governorship.

Gray was born in the rural community of Gray, in Sussex County, Virginia to Elmon Lee Gray and his wife Ella Virginia Darden Gray.

His grandfather Alfred L. Gray had moved to Virginia from Sussex County, Delaware and established a lumber company to harvest the local swamp pines.

The family-owned Gray Lumber Co. once owned over one hundred thousand acres of forested land in Prince George County, Surry County, Sussex County, Southampton County and neighboring areas, as well as several of the James River Plantations including Bacon's Castle, Swann's Point and Eastover.