Administrator
"If I surround myself with chumps, I look like a chump. If I surround myself with Champions, I look like a Champion." RJG For twenty nine years, Ray Grey made the students, staff and townspeople of Acton and Boxboro look like Champions. Through his devotion and hard work, Acton High School became Acton Boxboro Regional High School and an academic and athletic house of excellence was built. Hired in 1951 as a social studies and English teacher and appointed Principal in 1954 of Acton High School, Ray was literally chief cook and bottlewasher. He coached baseball and basketball, he collected tickets, he swept the gymnasium floors. Ray was the first to arrive and the last to leave.
As principal of ABRHS, Ray knew that athletics were an extension of academics. The student athlete and a successful athletic program could provide an entire population with a sense of pride, accomplishment and esprit de corps. He pledged his support to the student athletes of AB and backed it up. He also held his student athletes to a higher standard and expected nothing less than their best effort to represent the school with class and dignity. It was under Ray's tenure as principal that the entire population of ABRHS was dismissed from school on three separate occasions to support the varsity basketball team at the Boston Garden. The wisdom of this decision cemented the entire town and student body into a cohesive unit during a time in our history when there was a tumultuous polarization of people and attitudes. To quote from Fran Pratt in his 1981 biography, OK/RJG The Life of Raymond J. Grey, "Ray Grey was one of the common people, but he was not a common man. He was proud but not vain, demanding yet understanding, traditional but far sighted, serious yet witty. Because of his short stature, Ray went through life looking up at other people. What he probably never realized is that all the time he was looking up at us, we were looking up to him."
