Death separated couple for only 15 days
Vincent Gray Scientist b March 24, 1922 d June 14, 2018 Mary Gray Teacher b December 1, 1923 d June 29, 2018
After 69 years of marriage, Mary and Vincent Gray were separated for only 15 days in death. The unlikely pair – a communist and the daughter of a US Naval officer – met in post World War II Paris and lived all over the world. The last few months of their long lives were spent in adjacent rooms at the Bob Scott Retirement Home in Petone.
The loss of Vincent, aged 96, on June 14 was a reality even Mary’s dementia was unable to protect her from. She followed him, aged 94, on June 29.
Their lives spanned continents, careers and political hurdles. They exchanged life in Europe for Wellington, where Vincent would pursue his career as a scientist and Mary in education.
Mary was born in Agana, on the US Pacific territory of Guam, in 1923, the youngest of four.
At the time her father was aide to the governor of the territory and a successful and respected US naval officer. Like many navy families, they moved around and Mary attended at least 10 different schools during her childhood.
In 1937, her father became captain of the USS Arizona, which was sunk in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor four years later, with the loss of 1177 lives. Her father died from a heart attack in 1938, when stationed in Long Beach. Mary was 14.
She studied foreign languages in Ohio and went to work as a bilingual secretary but, when she failed to be promoted because she was female, she accepted a scholarship to study languages at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1946.
She was unprepared for postwar Europe and had had no idea of the extent of the destruction until she saw it for herself. She recalled how, with rationing still very much in force, her stomach shrank and from that time on she never felt hunger again.
It was on a train to Basel, Switzerland, with friends that she met Vincent. Their budding relationship horrified Mary’s family. Vincent was a cardcarrying Communist, having joined the party in England in 1941.
Mary’s mother mobilised her to Vienna, where she worked for a year on the Marshall Plan, helping to rebuild Western European economies after the war, in a futile attempt to cool the romance.
It didn’t work. Their affection for one another endured, despite Mary’s security clearance being cancelled due to her involvement with a communist.
Vincent accepted a post-doctoral scholarship in Ottawa, Canada, where Mary joined him.
They were married in the spring of 1949 at her brother’s home in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Both her sisters, married to naval officers, more or less disowned her. This was the McCarthy era, where the discovery of any communist sympathisers in the family had serious repercussions.
Vincent had begun life in Camberwell, south London. The family was of limited means but finances became much worse when his father died from septicaemia in 1934 when Vincent was 12.
His mother managed to raise her four children by setting up an agency for hiring maids from their home in Earls Court.
At primary school, Vincent’s intellect was recognised by a teacher who gave him extra lessons to earn him a place at a selected secondary school. His academic prowess eventually led to a scholarship to study chemistry at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
In 1942 he completed his bachelors degree with first-class honours. He joined the Colloid Science department and quickly became involved in research to assist the war effort.
During the war he was a member of the Home Guard, or ‘‘Dad’s Army’’, and was in a bicycle brigade that roamed the roads of Cambridgeshire at night on the lookout for German parachutists.
After gaining his PhD, he went to the Institut Pasteur in Paris, where he studied chemistry by day, while by night he indulged his passion for jazz in a band with regular gigs in the Latin Quarter.
After their stint in Canada, work opportunities took Mary and Vincent to Manchester and Wales, but the jobs were short-lived because of Vincent’s previous Communist Party affiliation.
In 1957 he was appointed chief chemist at the Timber Research and Development Association near High Wycombe, west of London.
During this time, he and brothers Tony and Douglas formed a slapstick comedy group known as ‘‘The Alberts’’. Their almost perverse anti-professionalism had a considerable influence on the 1960s comedy and satire scene.
Their antics culminated in a 1963 show called ‘‘An Evening of British Rubbish’’ at the Comedy Theatre in London. The show ran for almost a year and toured Belgium and France. They were chosen in 1964 to open BBC2 in Britain. With the help of George Martin, of Beatles fame, they produced two records.
The couple had four children and, after their move to High Wycombe, Mary became involved in local politics, standing for the Labour Party and being elected to the town council.
Their love of travel and a sense of adventure led to a radical move to the other side of the world when, in 1970, Vincent applied for a job in New Zealand as the first director of the Building Research Association (Branz). He flew out to start work in May 1970. The rest of the family packed up house, including 52 tea chests of books and a grand piano, and sailed out on P&O liner Oriana.
In New Zealand, Mary began a long career teaching languages, first at Mana College, and then as head of languages at the Correspondence School.
She learned Japanese, and was active in expanding the teaching of te reo Ma¯ ori, Japanese and Chinese into New Zealand schools.
She was a founder of the New Zealand Chinese Language Association, and in 2005 she was one of five recipients of the International World Council of Language Teachers’ top awards.
Mary was a true advocate for women’s rights and equality in the workplace. She was an active member of the NZ Family Planning Association and, even into her 90s, would regularly ask all sorts of people if they were practising contraception.
Both Vincent and Mary were avid musicians, with Vincent performing in the Valley Stompers Jazz Band for more than 15 years, and both of them playing with the Tawa Orchestra for three decades.
Vincent fell out with the Branz board over his refusal to certify concrete blocks for homebuilding, believing they weren’t watertight, and left the company in 1973. A short stint at the Technical Correspondence Institute followed, before a move to the forensic division of DSIR, where he frequently presented evidence in courts on various crimes.
His last work stint before retirement was at NZ Coal Research Association, before he and Mary moved to China, where for the next five years he continued his research into coal and Mary taught English.
Over his lifetime, Vincent’s political leanings swung from being a committed communist to a Labour supporter and finally to being a follower of ACT.
He became an outspoken climate change sceptic and was vocal on the issue, consulting on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from its inception in 1988.
He pulled no punches in his views on the matter, commenting that environmentalists had ‘‘hijacked’’ climate change, turning it into a ‘‘religious belief system’’.
He wrote The Greenhouse Delusion, and was adamant that there was no correlation whatsoever between carbon dioxide concentration and the temperature at the Earth’s surface.
Describing himself as an oldfashioned scientist, he said he had become sceptical after he began commenting on the IPCC reports.
‘‘The more I looked into it, the more suspicious I got. I’ve reached the stage now where I think the whole thing is almost a gigantic fraud,’’ he once said.
Mary suffered dementia in her final years, and had to move into the hospital unit of their retirement village. In his last six weeks, Vincent moved into the adjacent room.
Until a few weeks before they died, they still shared an evening glass of red wine and some cheese – a ritual from their Parisian days.
Lives lived well till the end. –By Bess Manson
‘‘The more I looked into it, the more suspicious I got. I’ve reached the stage now where I think the whole thing is almost a gigantic fraud.’’
Vincent Gray on researching climate change
Sources: The Gray family, Dominion Post archives