The Treasurer

I came to Cape Breton Island a soggy 2005 weekend to learn more about why, in 1927, a young man with his young bride would leave Cape Breton Island and his extended family for a new life in new country 800 miles south. What fragments of his narrative could I capture over the course of four days that would fill some of the gaps in H. Stewart Gray’s early story? Though I carry a Canadian passport in the same case as my U.S. passport, I had never been to Sydney, Nova Scotia. During those four days, Cape Breton Island became a special place for me.

The day I arrived in Sydney, where Stewart attended high school and first met Leta, I sat in a downtown coffee shop with Stewart’s nephew, John Newell. He asked me a question I should have asked myself before launching into this biographical journey. Now it seemed too late. “Barry, do you think Stewart would have wanted a book written about him?” That question caught me by surprise. Though I wished he hadn’t posed it, I asked him nonetheless, “What do you mean?” He answered without a pause, “You need understand, Uncle Stewart lived his life in a way that did not draw attention to himself. Wouldn’t you think he would have been uncomfortable with your proposed biography?”

I blurted out an off-the-cuff answer about how his story will be an inspiration to interested readers, and John graciously did not pursue his line of questioning. But the thought hounded me for the rest of the Cape Breton weekend. Stewart Gray might indeed have scolded me for spending time chronicling his life. The fact that a book about him might have drawn attention to Stewart became both the reason I should write this book and the reason I shouldn’t. In the end, I resolved to write the book in part because I had gone too far in the research. My more defensible reason, however, was that H. Stewart Gray’s self-deprecating nature, his formidable drive, his high bar of excellence, his early-life risk-taking and his abiding faith would be an encouragement and a lesson for the book’s readers. This rationale more than offset any hesitations from what his nephew John said to me that day.

This book is the story of Herbert Stewart Gray, husband of Leta, father of none, friend of many. I wanted to write his story on behalf of the humble men and women who live simply and strive toward the common good. Their stories are seldom told.

In my earliest years working at the seminary where he served as a trustee, back in the front of the 1990s I had the privilege of meeting with Stewart Gray on a number of occasions. He was also an acquaintance of my father, a Boston minister in the 1950s and 1960s. Our families shared Scottish roots. More than that, my great uncle on my father’s side was Rev. George Lewis Murray, longtime pastor of the United Presbyterian Church in Newton where Stewart and Leta were proverbial pillars. Rev. Murray was also the subject of A. Donald MacLeod’s book, George Murray of the U.P. These personal connections began my thinking some years ago about writing the story of the Grays.

I have named this book The Treasurer, a title I trust Stewart would have approved of, even though he might not have green-lighted the biography itself. This noun—printed on his business cards directly below his name—he retained from the day his business began in 1927 until his eighties when he was asked to scrub that title from his company letterhead. Being treasurer was his highest vocational calling. He was the company’s founder and for some time its president, a title he later happily relinquished to his protégé Stewart Gray MacDonald. But he would not give up the title of treasurer.

Stewart Gray was a treasurer in more ways than one. He oversaw the treasury of his business, for years carefully inscribing in the company books each financial ledger’s entry. He scrutinized his household budget, careful not to spend too much or convey to others that he was in any way financially. The more he saved, the more he could give away. He guarded the treasury of his and Leta’s family trusts, his philanthropic commitments. He stewarded the treasury of his house of worship, the Newton Presbyterian Church, assuring its solvency and financial integrity over his many decades of service there.

It was not just the financial treasures that H. Stewart Gray held carefully in trust. He was also a treasurer of friendships, honoring loyalty in his relationships. He was a treasurer of honesty, garnering a reputation of one who spoke the truth, too frankly at times, both in his business and in his family relationships.

Stewart Gray treasured his Christian values, maintaining a careful witness that reflected his biblical convictions. He guarded this spiritual treasury fiercely. He fought for an uncompromised orthodoxy at his local church and within the United Presbyterian denomination, both now abandoned. And he invested his treasures to keep solvent and faithful many Christian organizations, from colleges to seminaries to relief funds to evangelistic endeavors. Stewart treasured institutions of faith.

He also treasured his faith in God. Though I have never looked through Stewart Gray’s marked-up King James Version Bible, I would not be surprised if he had underlined or double-underlined Jesus’ words: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”