| Notes |
- From The University of California, In Memoriam, April 1963
Greta Gray, Home Economics: Los Angeles
1880-1961
Associate Professor Emeritus
Greta Gray was born in Covington, Kentucky, on September 30, 1880. Her early interests in architecture and housing directed her to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in 1901. For nine years she worked in the fields of architecture and architectural design, including one year of traveling and studying art and architecture in Europe. Upon her return from Europe, impressed by what she had seen in housing and architecture, she resolved to prepare herself for teaching in this important new area developing in the schools. It was at this point of her life that she became convinced that she must teach others the importance of good housing and good design. Perhaps Emerson's declaration that “our attractions are proportioned to our destinies” became a controlling force; she retained this interest during her life.
Dr. Gray became a high school teacher after completing preparatory work in education at the State Normal School in Cheney, Washington. For three years she taught and supervised high school subjects. In 1913 she became a student in Columbia University and received her Master of Arts degree in 1914. This period marked her entrance into the college and university field of teaching.
She taught at the University of Illinois, Kansas State Teachers College, and the University of Wyoming, with summer session teaching at Johns Hopkins, Washington State, the University of California, and Columbia University. In 1918 Dr. Gray became Professor of Home Economics and Chairman of the Department at the University of Wyoming. Again she took a leave from teaching to prepare herself for more advanced work on the university level. She attended and received from Yale University in 1926 the Doctor of Philosophy degree. Following the receipt of that degree, she was sought by the Bureau of Home Economics, United States Department of Agriculture, where she was assigned to prepare material on home and house planning. Upon completing her work for the Bureau of Home Economics, she became a Professor in the University of Nebraska. In 1928 she accepted an associate professorship at UCLA, continuing a fruitful and highly satisfying achievement in home economics during the next twenty-one years.
Dr. Gray's teaching covered a wide area of home economics courses during a time when the department was struggling against such odds as budgets, highly inadequate facilities and laboratories, reorientation from purely teacher preparation to inclusion of advanced courses on the graduate level in research in foods and nutrition, family economics, and the development of advanced degrees.
Even though faced with multiple problems, Dr. Gray, during her six years as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Home Economics at UCLA, directed research and developed and organized courses in family economics, house and home planning, family relations, dietetics, and even in sanitation, before UCLA had a bacteriology department, so that students might be eligible for dietetic internship. She also prepared problems in institutional management and became instrumental with the Art Department in organizing in 1945 the curricula in apparel merchandising and design requested by the garment industries of California.
Dr. Gray's publications were consistent with her interests in family economics and housing. Her book House and Home, published by Lippincott in 1923 (second edition in 1926), had wide use in colleges and universities. Forty-five published articles are noted in her files and were concerned with such problems as housing standards and the home economist, housing in Southern California, overhead costs of meals in small homes, household management, and numerous short articles that appeared in the Journal of Home Economics during the period from 1918 to 1947. Among Dr. Gray's notes appears this statement: “It is difficult to find outlets for studies in family economics and other lines in which I am interested, so I have written more that is unpublished than has been published. The other day while going through my files I found a dozen or more I had not previously discarded. Among them were: 'A Thirty-Year Financial History of a Los Angeles Family' and a study of 'Consumption and Production on Small Acreage Homesteads near Los Angeles.' ”
Dr. Gray participated in the President's Conference on Home Buildings and Home Ownership. She was a member of the Committee on Hygiene of Housing, of the American Public Health Association, and also served on several of the subcommittees. In addition she was a member of the Committee on Eligibility for Omicron Nu. Between 1930 and 1945 she was a member of several county welfare committees and a member of the Tenant Selection Committee of the Los Angeles City Housing Authority. She served as a member of the Los Angeles Defense Council and the Consumer's Interests Subcommittee.
She served on numerous University committees, of which the most important was the All-University Committee on Home Economics. She became the guiding person in the early development of a building for the Department of Home Economics. Much of the fundamental planning for the laboratories and research facilities for the present building had their inception during Dr. Gray's chairmanship. She was a member ex officio of the Committee on Apparel Design and, as Department Chairman, a member of the Executive Committee of the College of Applied Arts.
The breadth of her interests and her delightful sense of humor continued through her retirement, endearing her to friends and students.
Her unusual attention to teaching, administration, and committee work affected her general health, and she became seriously afflicted with arthritis and was compelled to accept a sick leave from February 1949 until the date of her retirement in June 1949. With her sister she moved to Cathedral City in the desert near Palm Springs to gain the benefits of the dry, hot climate for her remaining years. Her death occurred on January 18, 1961, at Cathedral City.
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1880 - 1961 (80 years)
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