Bowman Gray

Bowman Gray, Sr. (May 1, 1874 – July 7, 1935) was a former president and chairman of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and a major benefactor of the medical school of Wake Forest College that would bear his name.

Bowman Gray was born in what was then Winston, NC to Wachovia co-founder James Alexander Gray and the former Aurelia Bowman. After receiving his primary and secondary education in his hometown, Gray matriculated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the 1890-91 academic year and was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He left school the following year to become a clerk at Wachovia. In 1895, he began working at R. J. Reynolds as a salesman. His sales success propelled him into management after two years, at which point he moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he married the former Nathalie Fontaine Lyons on October 1, 1902. There she gave birth to their two sons, Bowman Gray Jr. in 1907 and Gordon Gray in 1909.

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, Jr. would also become president of R.J. Reynolds.

Between 1927 and 1932, he and his wife oversaw the construction of Graylyn, their 87-acre (350,000 m²) estate in the countryside surrounding Winston, across from R.J. Reynolds' estate Reynolda House. In 1932 when they moved into Graylyn, Gray and his wife donated their former house for use as a church. 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.

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