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GRACO INC. ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

The Dedication of the Russell J. Gray Technical Center

Narrators

Priscilla Chichester 2 Russell Lindquist 6 Victor Bacon 8 Ray Mason 9 Maxine Dale 12 Robert Smith 14 Marvin Eull 16 Fred White 17 Harry Jorgenson 18 William Volna 20

Interviewer

James E. Fogerty Minnesota Historical Society

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PRISCILLA CHICHESTER JF: And you’re Priscilla Chichester. I just want to make sure I get your name on tape. PC: Okay. Priscilla Chichester. In England, it’s Chichester. Here, it is Chichester; and some call me Chister. [Both laugh] JF: Tell me how you worked with Mr. Gray. PC: I first started—I don’t remember dates, or names or times or anything like that. When I first started at Graco, I was secretary to H. A. Murphy, Senior (marvelous man) and he shared a big corner office in the old building with Russell Gray. So I worked for Harry A. Murphy, Senior, who was Vice President and in charge of Product Engineering. JF: When was this, about? PC: Nineteen-fifty-something. I worked fourteen years, and I retired about ten years ago. It was a long time ago. So, they shared— Russ had an office here and a desk here, a big corner desk here, and Murphy, Senior, had a big desk here. After Senior [Leil] Gray died, then Mr. Murphy, Senior was President. I was trained to take care of Product Engineering; about twenty engineers. So I did. I was the regular janitor and pencil sharpener and telephone operator and general flunky, you might say. [Laughs] Russell Gray entertained a great deal. Babe, his wife, told me one time: I think she had two hundred and fifty parties at their place at Lake Minnetonka that year. And I mean, they were biggies. JF: Did you help with those, to arrange those? PC: No, but I was invited to a lot of them. And Murphy Senior was very kind. He and Ina usually invited me to their parties, when they had people from out of town and everything. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of work; but it was fun. JF: Tell me about Mr. Gray. What are your recollections of him? PC: Mr. Gray had a great sense of humor. One thing I remember: he hadn’t cleaned his desk out in about fifty years, and Murphy, Senior told me, “Priscilla, when Russ is gone on this trip, you can clean his desk.” I said, “I won’t. He’ll kill me.” Well, anyway, I finally decided I’d better. I cleaned his desk out. When he came back, he did nearly kill me. [Both laugh] But I didn’t throw anything away, so it was fine. But Russell Gray was this kind of a person: I bought a farm up at Taylor’s Falls, and it had no toilet, back-seat toilet, no running water, and was real rustic. A hundred acres of nothing, but we had beautiful horses and everything. I’d work until Friday night, and my big German Shepherd dog would stay with me. I’d pick up a son at De La Salle1

1 De La Salle High School in Minneapolis.

and we’d tear up there. That’s how we worked: I hauled water, everything, real rustic. I was having lunch at—what’s the place here,

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Jack’s or Edgewater—and Rollie Gray, Russell’s brother (there were the three brothers) came up and he said, “Priscilla, did you know that Russ and his wife and his son John and his fiancé Jan are all coming up to your farm tomorrow? Saturday. And he’s bringing some neighbors.” I said, “No.” He said, “Well, you’d better check with him.” I came back to the office and I said, “Russ, are you coming up?” “Yeah. Didn’t I tell you?” I said, “No, you didn’t tell me.” He said, “You’d better check with my bride. See what you should bring.” So I called her, and “Oh yes, we’re all coming. Didn’t Russ tell you?” “No, not a thing.” And I mean, it’s really rustic. I work all week and I go up there Friday night, and it’s pretty rough. She said, “What should I bring?” I said, “Bring your own liquor.” God, they brought liquor, a stack this high [laughs]. She took one look at the ice I’d prepared, and she said, “Go back and get some more ice; that’s not enough.” They stayed all night long. Russ sat there on a corner seat and played bridge with this neighbor, all night long. Then he’d say—these were his drinking days—he said, “Babe, go get me another drink.” I said, “I’ll get you another.” He said, “No you don’t know how to fix it. Babe, you know how to fix it. Bring me another drink.” And he’d sit there and he’d play all night long. Oh, we had so much fun. Then he’d say, “Look at that old teakettle there on that table. That’s a hundred years old. Is that—” You know, really bound up in everything. I had to go out to the garage and bring some boxes in to sit on, and I had a great big iron pot of stew and I kept throwing in more steaks and more vegetables and more stuff and everything. We just sat around and had a great time. His son, John, took his fiancé, Jan—who now is his wife with three beautiful children—out for horseback riding. His horse ran away with him, and it was in the deep woods. We adjoined the Wisconsin Interstate Park on one side, and Minnesota/Wisconsin on the other side. They jumped over logs; thick woods everywhere. His horse ran away with him. Anyway, he survived, but he lost his glasses. Babe said, “I just paid sixty-five dollars. You go back and find those glasses.” He said, “Mother, it’s a forest.” “You go back.” Do you know, they went back and they found them? Jan said, “Gosh, after that horseback ride, I think I could survive anything.” So that was some of the stuff. I mean, I only repeat that to show how cute it was. Then Russell said, “How did you happen to find this place? I’ve been looking for one like it for years and years.” So he started looking, and he found one like mine, way up in Wisconsin. And he has seven private lakes on it, and he had a great big Land Rover, one of those things the Army uses to go around. He’d say, “Come on, let’s go.” So we’d go out in that thing. One night, he hid my wig in the refrigerator [both laugh] and I had to go to church with a bandanna tied around. They were all waiting from me to blow my stack, and I didn’t say a word. They were all waiting, giggling, you know, for Priscilla to come out without her wig. We all volunteered to cook. I didn’t play bridge, and the others were all in there playing bridge, and Russ was in helping me make a salad. And he kept dropping the lettuce. I said, “Russ, you’re getting more on the floor than in the bowl. All of a sudden, he fell to the floor. I said, “Russ, what’s the matter?” So I ran in and got his wife, and we pulled him and pulled him into the bedroom and laid him down, and she covered him up with a blanket, and went back and played bridge. She said, “Oh, he’ll be all right. No problem; he’ll be all right.”

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JF: Did you work with him for all of your fourteen years here at Graco? PC: Well, no. No, then Mr. Murphy moved over to the other side and took over L. L. Gray’s job as President, and then Mr. [Bay] Beaver worked here. He’s now deceased. He took over Murphy, Senior’s job as head of Product Engineering. Then I worked for him. Then he was transferred to California: his mother was very ill. Then Chuck Murphy took over as head of Product Engineering, and I worked for him. Then we were moved over to this old building, and that was part of the deal. All the engineers and draftsmen were sent over there, and there weren’t any secretaries. Then I was a real flunky, you know. I mean, make reservations and do this and do that and everything, you know. I wasn’t so young; I’m seventy-six now. I had three expensive children: one in England, a movie star at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Two in college; one son is now a director of advertising, so that’s all right. I’ve been traveling for twelve years. He was National Tour Sales Manager for United [Airlines], and I’ve been traveling for twelve years. I’ve been everywhere but China. JF: Sounds wonderful. PC: Russia and Africa and everywhere. I’ve been traveling constantly. I just came back from the Columbia River. So anyway, that’s heaven. I’ve told you everything I know. Let’s see: about Russell Gray. Let’s see if I can tell you something really funny about Russell Gray. JF: You told some good ones, at least, that illustrate how impulsive he was at times. PC: Oh, I was just out to see him—Maxine Dale was a telephone operator, and he was very fond of Maxine Dale. She called me and she baked a pie. She said, “I hear Russ is home from the hospital, and I checked and they said it’s all right to come out and see Russ.” This was two weeks before he died. So we went out there, and she brought a pie, and oh, he was in bed. He would not let us see him in bed. John was there; Jan was out of town. John was there. He helped his father come into the living room and sit in the big chair, with a nice robe on, and just like he always was, with the cigar and the whole bit. And we had the pie and the coffee. He was in a great mood, and he said to me, “Priscilla, do you—” (I pioneered in Montana; we went out there in a boxcar, and we had a lot of sections of land.) He said, “I’ve always wanted to buy that land.” Imagine this: two weeks before he died, he’s just out of the hospital. He said, “Priscilla, do you still have that land out there?” I said, “Yes, I still do, Russ.” He said, “You know, I still think I’ll go out there and buy that. I’ve always wanted it.” I said, “Well, will you take me with it?” He said, “Hell, no.” I said, “Okay, then. Hell, no: you can’t have it.” [Both laugh] And that’s how he was. That’s a cute one. And then he touched Maxine’s hand, and he said, “Maxine, you haven’t remarried, have you?” (She’s had three husbands. Or two; I don’t know.) Anyway, he said, “Maxine, you haven’t remarried.” She said, “No, I haven’t.” And he said, “Oh, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Stay single and have fun.” I’ve been a widow for thirty years. JF: Well, those are good stories about Mr. Gray. PC: What else is real funny about Russ? Oh—when he was up at our farm, he looked out at the light. It was about midnight, and I was going to climb up the golden stairs and go upstairs to bed; it was a real raunchy old place, you know: really raunchy. We had this terrible old tumbledown

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barn, and my son was out there, working. And he said, “See there? I used to do that, and my mother used to holler at me, just like you did: ‘Come in here, it’s late, and go to bed.’” And that’s when he was the inventor of all this Graco stuff, the real inventor: Russell Gray. And he’d say, “Your son is out there working, and you’re going out there and calling: it reminds me when I was a child, and my mother would go out and say, “Come on in here now, come on in here.” And he said, “I would have worked all night, if they’d let me.” So that shows how he was. JF: That shows how he was, too. Thank you for the reminiscence.

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RUSSELL W. LINDQUIST JF: And you are Russ Lindquist. Tell me what connection you had with Russell Gray. RL: Well, I’ll tell you, Jim. I’m with the Dorsey2 office, and I used to do a lot of work with the Graco people, starting back about 1948. I met Russ the first time in about 1950, at about five a.m. in the morning. It was a kind of an interesting experience. We went up and bought what I think is now called Twin Something or another. Maybe you know about it: it’s the camp that Graco owns.3

Russ and I started out about, as I say, five o’clock in the morning. We drove up to Lake Mille Lacs and picked up the surveyor who was standing on the roadside. Drove up to Walker, Minnesota, examined the title, and drove out to the property. The surveyor apparently drew some lines, and the people that owned the property came out; we signed up the deeds, closed the deal, and that was it. Got back about nine o’clock at night. [Pauses] Stories about Russ—

JF: What did you think about him as a person? How would you characterize him? RL: Russ had to be, at the time of his death, a very, very close friend. I had known Russ as a good client for many years, and then one day Russ retired and I retired, and I after that saw him in quite a different light. In fact, Vic Bacon, I think, is around here somewhere. The Bacon Drug is an old coffee shop and a gathering place in Excelsior, and we used to spend a lot of time in Excelsior. As a matter of fact, about a month and a half before Russ’ death, we—Russ, my wife, and I—spent three or four days together at the farm over in Wisconsin. He’d become a very good friend, and I miss him a great deal. He was a marvelous man. Did you know him? JF: I interviewed him; I have about six hours of tape with him, so I got to know him a bit. RL: Did you? He indicated that he was being interviewed. JF: I enjoyed it very much. RL: I’m sure he expressed his philosophies to you. As a matter of fact, it was interesting because I was a young guy back in 1948, 1950, whenever it was. I had been in the firm for about two years; Graco was a major client of the office and as a result, Russ stood in quite a different position, as far as I was concerned, than he did at the time of his death. It was really the first time I had come to know him, and he spent most of the day expressing his philosophy. And his philosophy as expressed at that time was really no different than his philosophy immediately before his death. If only the world had more Russ Grays. JF: A nice tribute. RL: Yes, he was quite a guy. The thing I used to enjoy, or that I [do] enjoy, is the outdoors. It was not only Russ Gray: Leil Gray, his brother, was an exceptionally fine person. A couple of 2 Dorsey and Whitney, a Minneapolis law firm 3 The Oaks

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wonderful guys. I used to spend a lot of time out here at Graco, back in those days. In fact, as I walked across the parking lot, it was a little difficult, looking back at a lot of happy memories. They used to attend a lot of board meetings at that time: Leil Gray was Chairman of the Board. As I recall, the other board members were Russ Gray, Ingrid Rasmussen, and Ted Berquist. The meetings always went just about the same way. We’d be in Leil Gray’s office, and we’d be sitting around the room, and Russ would invariably say to me, “Oh, Russ, did you hear about the rowboat I bought yesterday? Did you hear about the tractor I bought yesterday? Did you hear about the gun I acquired yesterday?” And for the next half-hour he’d go on talking about his gun, his boat, his tractor, his whatever. At which time, Leil would finally say, “Well, I suppose we ought to get to the business at hand.” At which point Russ would always pick out the watch from his pocket and say, “My gosh, where’d all the time go? I’m late for a meeting!” [Chuckles] At which point, he’d up and disappear, and I never saw Russ sit through a board meeting. He maybe did at one time or another. JF: Very good. That’s great. RL: Jim, it’s been nice meeting you. JF: Nice meeting you, Mr. Lindquist. Thank you for stopping by.

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VICTOR G. BACON JF: And you’re Vic Bacon. VB: Yes. JF: And what was your connection with Mr. Gray? VB: I was a neighbor and a friend for about forty-five years. JF: How would you characterize him? VB: As different, but a man who would help you out any time you were in trouble. God knows how many Little League baseball diamonds he lit up, and other good things, because he didn’t want it publicized. But of course, being that close, we went through sad times. I sure miss him. Then I start feeling a little low, and I can always thank God there were more good things and funny things that happened, than sad things. Russ was a man [who would] try anything. He was very good on speedboats, and this again sticks out in my mind. He really knew how to handle a speedboat. But I bought one of these ‘boatels’—houseboats—that had a little thirty-five horse motor on the back. The pontoons were thirty feet long. We were out for a little ride, and I’d been instructed by Art Rosacker, who was the houseboat king of Lake Minnetonka, because he knew how to handle them. He showed me how to aim for a certain post, and when to cut the speed down, and look at the wind. Russ was on the boat, and I got about a block from the dock and I slowed down. Russ says, “What are you stopping here for?” I said, “Well, I’m going to dock?” He said, “What’s that round thing you’ve got in your hand? I’ll show you how to dock a boat.” So he gets the round thing in his hand, opens the speed up. My sister-in-law was sitting on the front. She saw he was going to hit the dock, so she stood up; thought maybe she could push the post to avoid a little collision. He said, “Sit down. You can’t dock a boat with everybody running around on it.” So she sits down, and wham! He took the corner post out. [Both laugh] When we got the boat tied up, Russ got off the dock and walked up the shore to his house. JF: [laughs] Just walked back home. VB: Yes. Left his car standing out on the road. So he never asked to drive my boat again. But asking me to talk—When Chuck talked to me at a meeting: “Canning,” he said, “and things like that.” I said, “Chuck, that’d be like having Russ give a talk to the American Pharmaceutical Association.” Because I’m not mechanical at all. In fact, if I told a little group at a party that I was going to rake the lawn the next day, Russ would say, “Now, you put the wide part of the rake down on the grass and then pull on the handle.” [Both laugh] But anyway: God rest his soul. He gave me a lot of good times, and was a real good friend. JF: Thank you, Mr. Bacon.

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RAY MASON JF: Would you give me your name, please? RM: Ray Mason. JF: Tell me how you knew Russell Gray. What was your relationship to him? RM: Well, we started in business in Excelsior in 1922, and he started this Company about 1924, 1925, and we knew him ever since. And he moved out there, you know, he lived out there [at Lake Minnetonka]. JF: What business were you in? RM: Automobile. I’m still in there. Sixty-one years I’ve been in the business. I lived next door to him there. Have you ever been to his house out there? JF: No, I haven’t. RM: Well, it’s on the point there and I lived next door. When I lost my wife, then I sold the place. Foolishly, but I did. But we’ve been great personal friends, besides that, ever since I came out there. JF: Tell me something about him. What did you think of him as a person, and how would you characterize him? RM: Well, Russ was a different person than anyone else. He was the biggest-hearted fellow I ever knew. We had people who lived around there when times were tough. I remember one family in particular; the man had had a successful business and lost it, in Wisconsin during the Depression. [He] moved his family (a big family), and they were having a tough time getting along. All that winter, Russ went over and made arrangements with the lumberyard, who handled coal at that time, to deliver fuel up to these people so they wouldn’t get cold. And they never knew who sent it. He never wanted his name mentioned. That was just one instance of what he did for people that they don’t know anything about. When they put the lights on the commons out there, which is a baseball field now next to the lake, my son was on the committee to go out and get some money for the lights. It was about a six thousand dollar deal at that time. They were having a little trouble getting money. I said, “Why don’t you go over and see Russ? He’s interested in that stuff.” So they went over to see him and told him what they were there for, and he said, “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming in and asking me for money for that. I just have to sit here and look at those lights all night?” The field was across the bay. Just kidding them, of course. He said, “How much are you short, Bill?” Bill said, “We need six; we’ve got about a thousand, and we’re five short. But whatever you want to give, Russ, we’d appreciate it, because we’d like to get so the kids can come in there at night and

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play.” So he sat down and wrote out a check for five thousand. Bill nearly fell over. He nearly fainted. [Laughs] Now that’s the kind of guy he was; you know what I mean. JF: Didn’t want the public credit. RM: No, no. We had two parties: Russ and Mrs. Boutell (of the old furniture company). They had a big house out there, and she used to come down to me when somebody had some tough luck. One time, there was a family there with two kids that drowned; they broke through the ice. Little tots. She came in to see me, and she said, “Do you know this family?” I said, “Very well. He works at the [Excelsior] Amusement Park. Fellow gets blamed for a little bit of drinking, but it’s not that bad. A very unfortunate thing; they were nice kids and everything.” She sat down and wrote out a check for three hundred dollars to me. She said, “See that they get it, will you?” Of course, I had to cash it and give them the money; she didn’t want her name used. People like that. Because then they get on the sucker list; you know what I mean. But Russ was—Anybody that needed anything, he was right there. That was his makeup. I belong to the Catholic Church up there, and Babe did—his wife—and when Graco went public, Russ had to make a few donations. He gave them a brand new organ. You should see it; it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. JF: I imagine he enjoyed that too, because he liked to play the organ so much. RM: Oh, sure, sure. But they couldn’t tell who it came from. Everybody knew, of course, pretty well. It must have been Russ. Yes, he was a great guy. I miss him very much. JF: Did you see him shortly before he died? RM: Oh, yes. I went over to the house just before he went back into the hospital the last time. I visited him one afternoon, because he was there along. John, his son, lived out there, but of course he couldn’t be there all the time. I saw John and I said, “I’ll go over this afternoon, so if you want to do something, he’ll have a visitor there.” But he was down then, and he began to realize his age. I am six months older than he is, but unfortunately, he had this—waterworks deal, I always called it, that was starting to back up on him a little bit. But he took care of himself the last few years. Of course, he enjoyed life, and he loved the lake and he loved the town out there. Everybody knew him. JF: Well, those are good stories. I appreciate your stopping by. RM: Hard to replace that type of man, in this day and age. JF: It is. I knew him briefly, but I enjoyed it very much. RM: He probably wouldn’t have been the easiest person to get along with for some other type of woman, see, but Babe understood him so well. JF: She must have been a remarkable woman.

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RM: Oh, a very remarkable person. He just never bothered her. Wonderful to be that way. It would be hard for me, for a long time, to put up with something like that. You know what I mean. [Both laugh] But not her.

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MAXINE DALE JF: You visited with Mr. Gray just before his death, I think. MD: A couple of weeks ago; a couple of weeks before he went away. JF: What was your relationship with Mr. Gray? MD: I was a switchboard operator at the Gray Company for twenty-four years. JF: So you knew him well. MD: Oh, very well. JF: How would you characterize him as a person? MD: Oh, a great guy. Just a great guy. I knew him during his showoff days, you know, down at Harry’s4

and so forth. He was a great guy. I remember when we used to work on Saturdays, and he used to bring John, his son, in with him on Saturday mornings. He’d park him down in the front with me—for me to take care of John. [Both laugh] I don’t know; I suppose in 1942 or 1943, John was ten years old? How old is John now?

JF: I don’t know. MD: He might be shooting for fifty? I don’t know for sure. But anyway, it was fun. JF: So you knew Mr. Gray for many years. MD: I should say so. JF: Did he change over the years, or did you find him pretty much the same guy? MD: I thought he was pretty much the same guy. Whenever he had any of us gals out at their home out at the lake, Babe would always say, “Well, you know you’re going to get wet.” And he’d take us out there in those speedboats, you know, and sure enough, he got us soaking wet. He’d put half of Lake Minnetonka over us. [Both laugh] And he loved it. JF: Somebody else here was talking about him at the helm of a speedboat, and said he was a holy terror. MD: Was he ever. But when he got in that boat and we gals went along with him, we knew we were going to get just drenched. JF: So you were prepared. 4 Harry’s Restaurant in Minneapolis.

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MD: Oh, not really prepared. We had good clothes on and everything. In those days, we never wore sport clothes to the office; we dressed up. He really got a kick out of getting us all soaking wet, and Babe would say, “You knew it was going to happen. He isn’t satisfied until he does it.” JF: Did you see him a lot in recent years? MD: Yes, quite a bit. Quite often I’d stop out there and see Babe and Russell, out at their house. Naturally, he had changed in the last year, I think. He slowed down a tremendous amount. Oh, he was such a kidder, as everybody knows. JF: I got a little sense of that: I interviewed him. I have about six hours of tape with him, so I have a little feeling of what he was like. He told me all about his philosophies and beliefs. It was great. MD: Beautiful philosophies and beliefs, really. Yes, they were. Very deep. JF: A very genuine person; a real person. Well, it looks like they’re getting started out there. I don’t want to keep you waiting for the ceremony. Thank you for coming in; I appreciate it. MD: Thank you very kindly. That was a pleasure.

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ROBERT SMITH JF: I want to get your name on the tape here. RS: Well, they call me Bobby. It’s Bob Smith. JF: And what’s your relationship to Mr. Gray? RS: Cousin. JF: Tell me something about him. How would you characterize him as a person? RS: Well, to characterize him as a person: Someplace along the line, he got the nickname of ‘Kick.’ Have you heard anybody call him ‘Kick’ yet? JF: No, I haven’t. That’s interesting. RS: Well, in our conversation, when I say ‘Kick,’ I’ll refer to Russell. JF: K-i-c-k? RS: Yes, just K-i-c-k. Where it came from, I don’t know. When he was young, his other two brothers, Rollie and Leil, used to mix it up quite a bit. Russell was the smallest, and he evidently got kicked around more than anybody else. Now, where that came up, I don’t know. JF: No, I never heard of that one. RS: Well, I started with the Gray Company in 1930. I was privileged to be the first truck driver and then stock-boy. Between being the stock-boy and the truck driver and anything else that had to be done. For instance, I would take three or four of the employees’ checks on a Saturday afternoon and run down to Dayton’s,5

after they had signed them. I’d cash them all, and I know I didn’t come back with more than sixty bucks, with four or five checks. Those were the days when Graco was first starting out, and it was a bit difficult.

The first gun Russell ever made was pneumatic, and it also had a spring on the inside of the brass casting. As time progressed, of course, this gun had to be made better and stronger. They used to have springs in this gun, and in order to test the tension of the spring, Russ and I would go downstairs in what was known as the garage in those days, and I’d have a big piece of cardboard that I’d hold in front of me and he’d stand back and test the tension of the spring as he released the pneumatic trigger on the gun. That of course would shoot the grease out to go into the fitting of a car. The tension of the spring depended on how close he could stand. Many a time, he’d miss the cardboard entirely, and I’d leave the office or the shop with more grease on me than I caught on the cardboard. 5 Dayton’s department store, Minneapolis.

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Kick was quite a musician. I was a musician at the same time, but being eighteen years old, I didn’t know too much about music, any more than he did. Russ couldn’t read a note of music, I don’t think. When he played the organ, if it wasn’t in the key of B-flat or the key of G, the other musicians would have to transpose into that key, or he wouldn’t play with them. He’d tell them that: “You want to play this good, now, play it in my key.” So to make a short story longer, there was a musicians’ strike about 1928, and for some reason Russ and I got into the same orchestra, the same pit orchestra, in the State Theatre. We were rehearsing, (and the rehearsing was all right) with the acts. As the time went on for the show to open up, the band was in the pit, and I goofed up, as the drummer. I goofed up; I couldn’t follow the act, or did something. So the gist of the whole thing is that I couldn’t figure out why I got let go. Russ’ favorite answer was, “Well, Bobby, if you had learned to read music, we probably would have kept you.” So what I’m just saying is, this is the way that Russ was. But I could go on with a lot of little things, more or less inside jokes and things like that. I worked for Gray Company from 1938 to 1949 or 1950. Unfortunately, I was not mechanically minded, and so my interests were in other places. But I’ve seen Russ ever since I was seventeen years old, up until now. I’m a little over seventeen now. So we grew up together. That’s all. JF: Thank you very much, Mr. Smith. Grac

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MARVIN EULL JF: What was your relationship with Mr. Gray, Mr. Eull? ME: I started at Graco, working with the engineering group, in 1956. I worked with Russ a great deal. JF: How would you characterize him as a person? ME: Energetic, exciting, fun to be around. He was actually a mentor of mine. He didn’t realize that, I don’t think. I enjoyed his attitude and I respected his ability, and I envied Russ. I’m no longer with the Company, but one of the things that happened a few years back ago, was I took a career-planning course. During the period of that course, there was an exercise in looking into your past and determining which people you envied or admired or et cetera. Russ was one of the people I admired and envied, and it was an exercise to try to help you determine where you wanted to go in the future. So Russ even played a part in that, even though I left Graco later; he was part of my future. JF: Did you find him an inventive kind of person? ME: Very much so. Very much so. JF: Any other particular stories about Mr. Gray? ME: I guess not. I didn’t, of course, associate with Russ as far as the social life was concerned, and beyond the extent that we did at the office and a few parties here and there. JF: You found him an influence on you, then? ME: Oh, yes, very much so. Russ, I think, would have influenced anyone he came into contact with. He was a very colorful person, I think. He was doing what he enjoyed, obviously, and he had the freedom to do it, of course. Perhaps not so much in the earlier years of Graco, but later on he was free to do it, and I envied that. He was doing what he enjoyed, which I was doing as well, but I didn’t have quite the freedom. And I enjoyed that.

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FRED WHITE JF: Would you read your name on the tape so we have a record of that. FW: Okay. Fred White. JF: And what was your relationship with Mr. Gray? FW: Well, I represented the Company, going back to 1938. Actually, when I started I was an employee of the then agent or representative to the Company, a man by the name of Bill Aske. My assignment was specifically to go out and sell a machine called the Graco Motor-Vitalizer. Russell was very much involved with the Vitalizer; it was his baby, really. We put this Motor-Vitalizer—which was about the size of an oblong heater, a big oblong heater—in the back end of my Ford coupe. My job was to take that out, working with our distributors, to demonstrate the device, which was an internal flushing machine for a car engine, to the car dealers, service stations and so forth throughout a four-state area. A little sidelight: I was married the month that I became associated with Graco in that role, and our wedding day was July sixteenth of that same year. Up to July sixteenth, I had not made sale one. But from the time my wife and I were married, sales really took off, and we sold quite a number of those machines. Then, going on for about two years—no, not that long; a year and a half—Aske resigned his position as representative for Graco, and I became the rep at that time. From then, of course, I sold the whole line. Other lines also, a hoist line and an air compressor line, because the income I could derive from Graco wasn’t sufficient to support us. Well, we went on through the War period. I did some expediting for Graco. I was never their employee. I maintained that same relationship up until the time when I had my sixty-fifth birthday and it was a very wonderful association. JF: How would you characterize Russell Gray? FW: Russell was a wonderful individual, sportsman, and idea man. I recall that late in the forties, when the sales dropped, several of us had gotten together and thought what a wonderful idea it would be if we had a grease gun of some kind for farm use that would take grease out of the original container, and deliver it through a gun and into a farm tractor, or piece of farm equipment. That was late in the afternoon, as I remember. The meeting was out at the Lafayette Club at Lake Minnetonka. Russell said, “I’ve got an idea.” He left the meeting immediately. He came back to the plant, working with a fellow by the name of Mike Rusko. He and Mike, I believe, worked all night, and the following morning, they showed us a model of what became the Graco Luberator farm grease gun, that we sold in considerable volume. I had a lot of good times with Russ, as well as working with him closely on his projects and new developments. He was a wonderful human being. JF: Thank you very much Mr. White.

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HARRY JORGENSON JF: I want to get your name on the tape, Mr. Jorgenson. Could you spell it for me, please? HJ: Harry J-o-r-g-e-n-s-o-n. JF: Thank you. What was your relationship with Mr. Gray? HJ: It began around the organ, when he used to play the Show-Off Club on KSTP, many years ago. I never would miss his performance. Many years later, I first came to know Russ through Ed Dunstedter. Ed came to town to play a concert, and of course, Russ was there, because Dunstedter was an idol of his. So I met Russ for the first time through Ed Dunstedter. I had heard of him through Ramona Gearhart, who had come to play the organ at Sally Cargill’s house out on Lake Minnetonka a number of times, and I had met her, come to know her. And then also through Bob Page, who arranged the Dunstedter concert. Out of that grew a friendship that just expanded and grew, until we were almost like a family. JF: How would you characterize Russell Gray? HJ: Well, these are pointless little stories, but they’ll give you a feeling of how Russ seemed to me. We were in Bismarck, North Dakota, where the Minnesota Theatre organ had gone, in Reinhart Delzer’s home: a twenty-six rank Wurlitzer organ. The organ convention was being held there. Russ was there and Bob Page was there—a giant musician—and Dunstedter, who was just—if you’ve ever heard of him, he is just absolutely fantastic. Dunstedter had finished playing a concert, and got off the organ and Reinhart got up and said, “Anybody that wants to play, come on up and play the organ.” Now, no one would even go near that organ while Dunstedter was in the room. So there was a long silence. Russ gets up. He says, “Bob, you go over and sit at the Hammond in the corner. Russ,” he says, “you sit down at the piano. I’ll show you how to play this organ.” That was Russ Gray. He walked right in, he played right from the heart; he didn’t ever, that I’ve seen him, read music. He didn’t play with all that precision or orchestration, but he played right from inside him. Now, to balance that story, Russ came to my home on occasion for dinner. This was at a time when he was in trouble, and he was ill, and he was not feeling well; feeling weak. After dinner, I thought I would entertain him. I put on some tapes of some Dunstedter concerts that I had recorded, and which Russ had never heard. This was stuff that Ed had played, and 1 had recorded. I put on the music and turned on the sound, and Russ was sitting there. Pretty soon, I started to notice Russ’ head go down. And a minute or two later, he began to shake. And a minute or two later, he got up and walked out of the room. I walked out in the hall to see what was wrong, and he was standing, leaning on a table, with his head down, and he was shaking. He was so emotionally involved that I didn’t dare let the music continue to play. So the brashness of his behavior with Ed: “I’ll teach you how to play the organ;” balanced against his great respect for Ed’s musicianship and the degree to which he was an emotional man, is all kind of wrapped up in that little story.

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Sometimes we would receive a telephone call. Babe would say, “Harry, Russ wants to talk to you.” Russ would come on the phone. He’d say, “You kids get out here. We’re going out to dinner.” My wife would get on the other phone, and she’d say, “Russ, we’ve got dinner in the oven. It’s almost on the table.” He’d say, “Put it in the refrigerator. You kids are going to dinner. I don’t want to hear any of that nonsense.” So we’d get in the car, and off we’d go for dinner. There was no way to say “no” to Russ; no, sir. Reinhart Delzer is now partly senile and not able to function very much any more, and Russ said, “Harry, we’ve got to go up and see Rene.” That was our plan, that when he died, was intending to get in the car and drive up to Bismarck. He just loved to do that. JF: He mentioned doing it many times. HJ: We went up to Bismarck. He loved to travel on the train, and Dunstedter’s wife, Eva, wouldn’t fly. So we went up to Bismarck on the train, and Russ just loved that way of going. But he really enjoyed the organ and Rene and all of those things that were connected with music. If you’ve seen his music room at the lake, you’d appreciate that. JF: Thank you, Mr. Jorgenson. Grac

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WILLIAM VOLNA JF: You’re Bill Volna? WV: Right. JF: What was your relationship with Mr. Gray, Mr. Volna? WV: Well, it was a relationship that started indirectly when I first got married in 1956. When I got married in 1956, I got back from the Army and I took an apartment in St. Paul. The people that moved in next door also just got married, and they were Russ’ niece, Ann Gray, and her husband, a fellow named Wally Salovich. And we got to know each other for the two years that we were there. Wally was initially a hospital administrator at St. Barnabas. We bought a home and we left, and I used to always kid Wally about, you know, “When are you going to hang up this hospital bit and go over to Graco?” And he insisted that he would not do that and so forth. We went our way, and we kept in contact at Christmastime and here and there. Subsequently, I heard that Wally was over at Graco. I was a Honeywell engineer, from 1950 to 1969. Wally did go to Graco, and he became, I believe, a marketing head. He knew I was at Honeywell and so forth. For a few years there, when Wally would want to give a gift to a west coast sales manager, he would call me and maybe I’d buy a Honeywell Highland Pentax at Company cost. When I needed a spray gun once, Wally bought me a spray gun from Graco. So that was kind of the way it was. In 1967, I thought I wanted to do something else with my life, so I started building a building in northeast Minneapolis, which I did for two years with my dad. We built a three-thousand-square-foot block building, after hours. I was still employed at Honeywell. Finally, in 1969 I wrote my letter of resignation to Honeywell, and I did not burn any bridges. I said I wanted to go out and participate in one of the last freedoms we still have in this country, and that’s to go out and lose your fanny in self-employment. I did leave Honeywell, and I hung up my shingle on Quincy Street, Northeast, as Volna Engineering. And the phone didn’t ring very often. One day, I thought, “Gee, I really ought to call Wally Salovich and have lunch with him and show him my diggings here; he might get a kick out of it all.” So I did, and we had lunch, and Wally really was impressed with what you could do with two-years’ worth of TV time and after-hours work. He said, “Say, I really have to bring a friend over here to see this. If I do, you’ll never get rid of him.” He’s someone who’d really get a kick out of what you’ve done here.” I said, “Oh, fine, whoever he is.” About two weeks later, the big red Cadillac showed up and an entourage came in the door on Tuesday. It was Wally leading Russ Gray, and several other high-level people from Graco. That marked the first Tuesday, which then led to—I would estimate— about six hundred Tuesdays, six or seven hundred Tuesdays: I just saw him every Tuesday for about fourteen years or so, and we became very close. I had a unique relationship there, when I frequently would think about it, in that we would get into heavy arguments. Since I wasn’t a Graco employee, I could tell it like it was, and we really tangled lots of times. Yet, the next Tuesday, we’d both be looking for each other, and sure enough, he’d be back.

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JF: How would you characterize him as a person? WV: I think Dave Koch said it very well at the dedication of the building here today, when he said, “He was right just enough times to keep you on your toes.” He was a swashbuckling, shoot-from-the-hip, bombastic, exasperating kind of guy that would drive you up the wall. He would violate the rules of physics. To a person trained formally in the sciences, he’d drive you nuts. But every now and then, you would discover that the guy was right, and that kept things going, you know. Being a twenty-year Honeyweller in the systems and research division, which is where I worked before I left, I would have to admit that I think I observed how things frequently would and could bog down. Your efforts on a project might bog down because maybe people were too formally trained, and we were not willing to shoot from the hip. So when he would shoot from the hip, or expound on this—and that was his style—I’d have to agree that very, very often, that would be the catalyst that led you to something that truly was new. You could get bogged down in just too much technical training and overlook things. So we just had a great time there, all those years. I personally liked to sketch, and I think that Russ got a big kick out of that. We would go to lunch, and he would come up with one of his wild ideas, and I could take the back of a place-setting mat and say, “Do you mean like this, Russ?” and I would then wax with my pencil, and then we would give and take, and I think he got a big kick out of that. That is a talent that I have, and I think it might have been some of the magnetism that I had for him. Or that he had. I try to think of stories and little anecdotal things; they’ve all been really well covered by other people. I think that I, through Russ, always was honored to be able to sit with some of the really heavy-duty people in this city. He took me along; I could be the quiet mouse in the king’s court. I met many, many people that I never would have met were it not for him. I always valued that very much; it was a real neat opportunity to be brought along. So he was kind of a surrogate father to me and I used to feel, with my technical background, that it was important for me to look out for him, too. I remember once when I thought he was going to get involved in an energy scam with an outfit in St. Paul—somebody that was proposing to make gasoline by putting a pill into a five-gallon can of water. They came on pretty hot and heavy, and I heard about this before the great meeting was going to occur, and I literally horned in. I called him and I said, “Do you mind if I come along, Russ? I won’t say a word, but just let me come along and listen to this,” because I could smell it. It was, again, a violation of the rules of physics. I did go along, and about the time they were going to put the sting on him, I then came forward and asked a few questions and I think I helped him in that case. JF: Thank you, Mr. Volna.

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