From Indiana physical education leadership to improving lives in Central and South America, Purdue HHS alumnus earns Distinguished Service Award

Don Gray

Written by: Tim Brouk, tbrouk@purdue.edu

As Don Gray relaxes in his Crawfordsville, Indiana, home, he usually has family on the mind: Do his grandkids need babysitting this weekend? How is son Jason’s podiatry practice going? Are daughter Staci’s students at Wyandotte Elementary School excelling?

But as Gray reflects on his Purdue University Department of Health and Kinesiology (HK) experience, he remembers six years of academic rigor to earn his undergraduate and master’s degrees, discovering his passion for helping and educating people, and meeting his beloved wife, Carol, after temporarily blinding himself after “a minor explosion.”

And there was the time Gray was almost crushed to death by an enormous old oak tree he cut down during a weekend job of falling trees and splitting wood in rural northwest Indiana.

“I was laying in cow dung with my chest going up and down and spitting up blood,” Gray remembered from the accident. “At the hospital, they said I was just one massive internal bruise.”

Despite the occasional health scare, Gray earned his undergraduate degree in 1971 before studying under Anthony A. Annarino, a Purdue kinesiology professor from 1951-86, and A.H. Ismail, another longtime kinesiology professor and namesake of the A.H. Ismail Center for Preventive and Lifestyle Medicine, for his 1972 master’s degree in HK.

In the fall of ’72, Gray started what would be 12 years in the Crown Point Community School Corporation in Indiana, beginning as a physical education teacher and ending as physical education director, which had him oversee 18 staff members. Gray said he had five additional job titles during his tenure, which saw him teach thousands of students in Crown Point elementary schools, middle schools and the high school. He then pivoted his career, working as a State Farm insurance agent for 31 years until his 2015 retirement.

From East Chicago to West Lafayette

Gray credited his work ethic from growing up in East Chicago, Indiana, a tough steel mill town in northwestern Indiana. In winter months, he shoveled more than 1,000 pounds of coal into the furnace of the family home.

“The bathroom (door) was the only door in my house, and my bedroom was the back porch with no heat and no insulation. And (my room) was literally six by six (feet),” Gray recalled.

His father, Donald D. Gray, instilled the mindset that money is earned through hard work. The importance of education was also preached by the elder Gray to his son, the first in the family to attend college.

“He was a pipefitter, welder, construction worker,” Gray remembered. “He always stressed education. He said he didn’t care what I did afterward because once you have your degree, nobody can take it away from you. But whatever you do, you have to give it an honest day’s labor for the wage. And that’s what I live by.”

Crown Point

Gray said he used his initiative cultivated at Purdue to steadily climb the ladder in the Crown Point school district. A typical school year would not only see him teach kids but coach tennis and basketball, co-direct a summer camp and even install playground equipment. The hard work and openness to try anything earned Gray the promotions.

“You’ve got to have goals. You’ve got to set a goal and have a vision and work toward it. That’s as simple as I can make it,” he said.

Gray was always sure to point his former students toward Purdue. Two became star athletes as Boilermakers — John Brugos (a 6-foot-9-inch forward for Purdue men’s basketball, 1986-90) and Ryan Grigson (a tight end and offensive tackle for Purdue football, 1990-94, co-captain with Mike Alstott, 1994), who is currently the senior vice president of player personnel for the Minnesota Vikings of the NFL.

Hearts In Motion

Toward the end of his Crown Point tenure, Gray was introduced to Hearts In Motion, a nonprofit charity organization formed in Schererville, Indiana. For 30 years now, Gray has worked in Guatemala and Colombia to help build houses, a nutrition center, physical therapy and optometry clinics, and a firefighter training center.

“It’s kind of awe-inspiring that you can go down there and make a difference in somebody’s life,” Gray said. “And I’ve always been handy and constructing things. So, I just go down there and whatever they tell me to build, I build. I work with some close Guatemalan friends I have now, and we just build things.”

Gray last went on a Hearts In Motion trip in January, where he received an appreciation award from the organization. The only years he went less than thrice were spent taking care of Carol, who passed away in 2019.

“Just to see what you can do and then see the smiles you put on people’s faces down there, it’s just heartwarming,” Gray said. “And for me, it’s a vacation. It was always a vacation. It wasn’t work for me.”

Giving back to HK

Today, Gray lives for spending time with his family, and since his move to Crawfordsville, he reestablished his relationship with Purdue, attending at least one Purdue football game a year, and he recently created the Don E. Gray Family Student Scholarship, a new perpetual scholarship awarded to an incoming HK student from an Indiana family in financial need and with a grade point average of 3.0 or higher. In addition to the scholarship, a substantial donation will be made in the near future to the College of Health and Human Sciences and HK.

“Purdue has been very, very good to me. I’m just paying it forward or paying it back. Whatever way you want to phrase that,” Gray said. “This is something I wanted to do. and so I’m happy that I can do that. And hopefully some young person coming from a low-income family, which I came from, will have the opportunity to live out their dreams.”