[6] Gray also helped raise money for the Boy Scouts of America, Virginia Historical Society, Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts and Technology, Stuart Hall, the National D-Day Memorial at Bedford and the Southeast 4-H Center in Wakefield.

He also led efforts to establish Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as a state holiday, and protected the Southside economy, including truckers and gasoline retailers.

Gray advocated a bridge across the James River to replace the Jamestown Ferry to aid economic development in Surry but the bridge was vehemently opposed by residents of a nearby upscale waterfront residential community as well as historic preservationists who were concerned that the proposed span would adversely affect the historical, environmental and visual characteristics of the Jamestown area.

Shortly before retiring from the Senate, Gray helped persuade Sussex officials to consider allowing a large regional landfill to open in the county as a revenue-raising opportunity.

[13] Even in political retirement, Gray continued to lobby for a Jamestown-Surry bridge, for new economic development in Sussex, and to keep women out of his alma mater, Virginia Military Institute.

"Thank God the first phase went in our favor, but this thing is a long way from over", Gray said in 1991, referring to the possibility of appeals of the court's decision against allowing women into the school.

After defying the Supreme Court order for three months, VMI's governing board ultimately voted 9 to 8 to admit women in 1996, transforming the nation's last single-sex state-supported school into a co-ed institution.

[14] After leaving the Senate, Gray moved from Waverly to a home overlooking the James River at Jordan Point in Prince George, and in his later years lived on Monument Avenue in Richmond.

He died on September 27, 2011, about two and a half years after receiving VMI's Harry F. Byrd Jr. Public service award in March 2009.