Professor H. L. Bray
Personal
Lorna Jean Bray (1939-2023)
My mother was born Lorna Jean Lewis on October 27, 1939 in Edcouch,
Texas, the second of five children, to Lorena Mae Lewis (maiden name
Mullen) and Clark Preston Lewis. Her dad was the local electrician in
this agricultural community in South Texas, and her mom took care of
the children. With no air conditioning, her dad constructed a concrete
above ground pool for his kids to "beat the heat." As a young person,
she liked art and music and did well in school. In high school, she
wondered why none of the boys would ask her on a date, until she found
out that her older brother Arland who played center on the football
team had told everyone that they would have to get his permission
first. After a couple of years
of college at Pan American University in Edinburg, she took a job with
Delta Airlines in Dallas, and then Houston where she met my dad, and
then San Francisco after that, working in their scheduling department.
This job allowed her to travel for free. Later in her career she worked
at the NASA office and booked flights for many of the famous astronauts
in the 1960's.
My parents met through friends - my mom's coworker and roommate was
dating a friend of my dad's. They hit it off immediately. My mom was
impressed with my dad's sense of humor, self-confidence, and
down-to-earth style. My dad, the second Hubert Bray (both his dad and
his son - me - have the same first and last name), felt like he had won
the lottery and was just making sure he didn't mess it up. When my dad
got a great job opportunity programming computers for Lockheed Missiles and Space Company
in San Francisco, my mom followed him out there where they got married
at the courthouse in Palo Alto, California in 1963. They later returned
to Houston for most of their nearly 60 years of marriage. After my dad
introduced his wife to his parents, my dad's mom took him aside and said,
"Hubert, I just don't know how you did it!" in a playful and yet sincere
way. My mom was extremely personable and likeable to everyone. On
numerous occasions throughout my childhood especially, people would
come up to me and say, "Hugh, I just met your mom - she is so nice!"
Certainly from my perspective as her son, she was one of the kindest and
most thoughtful people I've ever known.
My mom was also very intelligent, but in an understated way where no
one would suspect it. When we took a home IQ test when I was a kid, she
scored 139, beating my dad by a few points, even though he was a
computer programmer at NASA who knew calculus and computer science
quite well. My mom was a great example of how living a simple, honest,
and hard-working life relentlessly working towards your goals is the
secret to achieving your personal definition of success. My mom did not
opt for a big career, but instead focused on being the best mom she
could be to her two sons, Hugh (me) and Clark. She supervised my
education for as long as she could, up until her math knowledge was not
quite adequate, when she got my dad to take over. If I had a project
due in school, she was my implicit collaborator - not to do the work
for me - but to make sure I had all of the supplies and support I
needed to succeed. Great examples of this were science fair projects
that I did every year from the 6th grade to the 12th grade. My project
was always the most impressively constructed and artistically
presented. Again, I did the work, but she was always there supervising
and making sure I used the power drill safely and successfully. This
culminated in the 10th grade when I did a science fair project entitled
"It All Adds Up" (a name she suggested) where I presented 6 different
ways I had independently found to add up the kth powers of the first N
positive integers. This was before the internet where you'd probably
just google how to do this. That project won one of the four grand
awards in the Science and Engineering Fair of Houston, which earned my
project a spot at the International Science and Engineering Fair,
placing 2nd in the mathematics category in 1986. This was
tremendously encouraging for a 15 year old, and probably influenced my
future choice of career. In retrospect, of course, my mom was my ace in
the hole - my secret weapon - who made absolutely certain that there
were not any impediments to her kids achieving their full potential, in
whatever area suited them best. And yet somehow I never felt pushed by
her in any way. She was happy when we succeeded, and loved us just as
much when we did not.
My mom also did a lot of volunteer work in the schools that Clark and I
attended, especially our elementary school Parker Elementary, including
for decades after we left the school. In addition to teaching an
algebra class at least one year, and art classes other years, she
focused on the artwork and set design of school plays, which she really
enjoyed. One year she won the Volunteer of the Year Award from the
Houston Independent School District. Even more broadly, she took an
interest in people, including kids she interacted with at Parker, and
was always an encouraging voice for whoever needed it.
The pictures below give a glimpse of her life - the fun parts, at
least, when everyone is dressed up at parties or on vacation. Of course
the hard work behind the scenes is not shown. If you see a picnic where
everyone is laughing while eating watermelon, you can be confident that
my mom was the one who went shopping for the food, got the paper plates
and napkins, put everything in an ice chest to keep it cold, and made
sure that everyone had a delightful time eating watermelon by the creek
in front of the cabin in Colorado that my dad's parents had bought
decades earlier, and had fixed up over the years. As a child we visited
that cabin in Eldora, Colorado every summer for 2 or 3 weeks, getting
there and back via a two day car ride.
My mom passed away peacefully on May 12, 2023, six months after
suffering a stroke on November 13, 2022. Her husband Hubert, with the help of some incredible nurses, took the
best possible care of her at home during that time, holding her hand and
comforting her all day every day, like a scene from the movie "The
Notebook," though neither of them ever saw that movie. She is
survived by her brothers Arland and Larry and their wives Grace and
Ruby, her sister Edna, her husband Hubert, her two sons Hubert and
Clark and their wives Heidi and Holly, and her seven grandchildren
William, Emily, Andrew, Jonathan, Caroline, Benjamin, and Avery.
I recently ran across the saying, "Enjoy the little things, for one day
you may look back and realize they were the big things." My mom
personified that wisdom.
Hubert Lewis Bray
May 15, 2023
