Mother-of-the-Year
When circuses play little towns in Kansas and go away leaving their 'tanbark rings stamped on the prairie, the town youngsters bring in their ponies and try to duplicate the Daring Feats of Horsemanship they have just witnessed. At least that is what they did in the early 1880s and among the girls of small Oswego, Kans. who would try backflips and pick-up-the-handkerchief was an extremely pretty, darkhaired girl named Harriette Flora.
Just before Christmas in 1886, Harriette Flora, aged 17, married a steady-going 19-year-old Arkansas country boy named Carl Raymond Gray. In that year he had won a promotion with the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad, from telegrapher & station agent to chief clerk in the general western agent's office. He took his bride to live in Wichita and there in the third spring the first of three sons was born to them.
Carl Gray got ahead fast. By the turn of the Century he was superintendent of transportation of the St. Louis & San Francisco. In 1911 he got a railroad presidency (Spokane, Portland & Seattle), first of a series of top offices which culminated in the presidency of the Union Pacific in 1920 and which ends with his retirement when he reaches 70 next autumn (TIME, April 26).
Last year in Omaha, just before Christmas, the U. P. gave Carl Gray a Golden Wedding party and beside him sat Harriette Flora of Oswego, Kans. still pretty, still brightly energetic, and quite as much a personage in her sphere as Carl Gray is in his. He made that very clear in his speech of thanks to his colleagues and to her. And last week in Manhattan, just after her eldest son's 48th birthday, the Golden Rule Foundation made it still clearer by hailing her as the " American Mother of 1937," announcing a fete for her on Mother's Day (May 9) with luncheon, silver medal and national broadcast.
In place of "Mrs. Grundy," Omaha has for years recognized "Mrs. Gray" as its arbiter of behavior, but mingled with Omaha's respect has been a degree of affection never bestowed on "Mrs. Grundy." In the Golden Rule Foundation's rating system--25% for character, 25% for record as a mother, 10% each for community activities, public speaking, health, personality and human appeal--she outscored 23 other nominees by unanimous vote of the judges, with the last quality counting as heavily for her as the first. Personal piety is Mother Gray's central characteristic: 50 years of Sunday School teaching; a monthly trip to Kansas City to conduct a huge Bible class for women; an annual series of Bible lectures in Los Angeles; prayers before breakfast, with a Bible verse recited (or read from a slip of paper) by each member and guest of the family. But hers is a cheery piety and mothering her three sons, five grandchildren and one greatgrandchild comes next. Son Carl Raymond Jr. is now a vice president of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha R. R. Son Russell Davis, 37, is Boston freight representative of the Pennsylvania R. R. Son Howard Kramer, 35, is a coming cancer surgeon at Mayo Clinic. To them, and to every other member of the family, she sends a present for every hour of the day on Christmas. She sends them presents on Easter, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July and any other day she has a good excuse, especially on her own birthday, Sept. 17, when she sends presents to everyone she can think of. Every year on her way to the Gray summer home at Thomaston, Me., she takes her servants for a long bus ride through Manhattan, with a stop at Grant's Tomb.
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