Chapter 6, Part 2

By Frank Tursi, Susan E. White and Steve McQuilkin
JOURNAL REPORTERS
© Winston-Salem Journal

Bowman Gray Jr. was the high priest of the Reynolds Way. He showed that he could be true to its culture by working hard and humbly, moving up through the system like other salesmen. But he could also be a vehicle for change -- within the confines of the Reynolds Way -- by encouraging the rise of marketing and by slowly loosening some of the knots on spending.

Bowman Gray Jr. spent many a quiet weekend prowling around Brookberry Farm, where the family moved in 1949. (Journal File Photo)

Gray was named sales manager in 1952. At the time Reynolds didn't use lofty titles such as executive vice president. ''The sales manager was next to God. God was the chairman of the board,'' recalled John Dowdle, a former treasurer.

Gray became president in 1957, and he ran the company through seven committees. Thirteen of the 16 directors were company officials and met informally for lunch once a week. If something important came up they could be rounded up in 10 minutes for a meeting. Management by committee, blended with the occasional mandate from above, was part of the Reynolds Way.

Gray's focus was simple: How can we sell more cigarettes?

The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was once the largest cigarette company in the United States with a powerhouse of best-selling brands: Winston, Salem and Camel. But times changed, and as the case against smoking became more pronounced in the 1960s, RJR failed to adapt to the marketplace. Its rivals would eventually rush past it, and RJR's efforts to catch up would have a profound impact on the company and the cigarette industry.

Before airplanes became popular for business travel, Gray would ride the train from Winston-Salem to New York City. ''He'd have a pack of Winston in his left coat pocket and a Salem in his right coat pocket,'' Lyons Gray, his son, recalled. ''If somebody wanted a Camel, he probably had one inside.''

When he finished a pack, he would find a way to prop it up in one of the train's windows so that people in stations would see the pack when the train went by. ''We'd all learn to do it,'' Lyons Gray recalled. ''If you were in the men's room you'd leave it on the sink for the next guy to see. It was a subliminal planting in the mind.''

The father told his son that a salesman shouldn't give up until a retailer has said no three times. ''Then you get your belt buckle up on the counter and you get close to him and that's when you really start doing the selling,'' Lyons Gray said.

Whether pushy or merely persuasive, Bowman Gray left such an impression on his own clients of the 1930s that store owners and managers would ask other Reynolds salesmen about him 20 years later.

Gray had a tough management style but didn't often yell. And he didn't hold a grudge. ''If you were wrong he would chew you out, but that was the end of it,'' recalled Bill Smith, a former president of Reynolds. ''And five minutes later it was forgotten, by him. It might not be forgotten by you, but it was forgotten by him and things went right back to normal.''

One story still circulating about Gray concerns a visit from executives of a vending-machine company in the late 1950s. It was rumored to be a mob front. The executives told Gray that Reynolds would have to pay double the going rate for placement if the company expected RJR brands to command the best slots in their machines.

Gray looked squarely into their eyes and said, ''Gentlemen, this conversation will end in 30 seconds. In the time that remains to us, I will tell you that if you want 40 percent of the market to disappear all at once from your vending machines, that can happen. Otherwise, you will accept the same arrangement that we have with all of our customers.''

Then some burly Reynolds guards appeared at Gray's office and told the executives the elevator was waiting.

Two Bridges

By the late 1940s, Gray, his wife, Elizabeth, and their four sons (Peyton was born in 1951) were living in a mansion at 1121 Arbor Road, a half-mile or so from his parents' Graylyn estate and the Reynolda House compound.

Gray wanted a more rural setting, and in 1946 he started buying land in western Forsyth County. By 1949 he had acquired 840 acres and built a Georgian mansion on the property. He called the place Brookberry Farm.

On the drive home to Brookberry, Gray would pass two bridges. By the time he crossed the second bridge he was in another world largely free from the concerns of the cigarette wars, recalled his son, Christian.

Gray raised Guernsey cows and was the president of the N.C. Guernsey Breeders Association. ''He loved those cows and he knew them all by name,'' recalled Lyons Gray. His father carried a small, three-binder notebook in which he kept information on each cow, such as her milk production and calving history.

He worked on the farm every weekend, donning a flannel shirt and a pair of khakis and driving around his rolling land. ''It was the way he decompressed from the pressures of the workweek,'' Lyons Gray said. ''. . . That was his release, that was the way he got his mind off other things.''

Like the rest of the city's aristocracy, the Grays vacationed at Roaring Gap, on the shoulder of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Gray was playing tennis there one day in the early 1950s when he felt a strange pain in his calf. He said later that it felt like someone hit him in the leg with a rock. Eventually doctors diagnosed a painful and degenerative muscular disease similar to Lou Gehrig's disease. By the late 1950s he was walking with a cane. By 1961 he was in a wheelchair.

Despite the pain, Gray worked long and hard. He usually rose at 6, did a little work in his home office and ate breakfast alone. ''I made a deal with my wife when we were first married,'' Gray said. ''I'm not in the best humor at breakfast, and we wanted to stay married.''

He left Brookberry at 7:30 and, while he still could, he drove himself. By about 1960, a chauffeur took him to work.

He was not much of a father by modern standards. There were no long walks with his sons. No fishing trips. But Gray was good at shutting work out once he crossed the bridges each day at about 5:30.

He would retreat to his study to look through the day's mail and the few papers he brought from the office. He and his wife would have a martini before dinner poured from a week's supply Gray mixed each weekend in a quart jar.

After dinner, Gray would watch television.

He demanded that all the company salesmen have televisions. If they couldn't afford one, Reynolds would give them one; Gray thought it was important that his sales people know what the competition was doing.

At Brookberry Farm, the commercials were more important than the regular programming. ''You and I, when a TV ad comes on, we might go to the fridge to get some ice cream, but when those ads came on he sat and watched them,'' Lyons Gray said. ''And we had to be quiet during those ads -- especially if it was a cigarette ad -- and lots of them were.''