Harry Jack Gray (November 18, 1919 – July 8, 2009) was an American business manager and philanthropist, best known as CEO and chairman of United Technologies.
His father's business failed when he was eight, and he financed his college education at the University of Illinois with multiple jobs that included washing dishes, waiting tables, and stoking a boarding-house furnace.
[citation needed] He then served as chairman and CEO of Harry Gray Associates, which participated with Shawmut National Venture in the 1993 buyout of Mott Metallurgical Corporation.
[2] Bronze busts of Gray and his wife are on display in the museum, which also houses his helmet and other memorabilia, including his Silver Star awarded for valor during the Battle of the Bulge.
[3] According to Stephen Miller's remembrance article published in the Wall Street Journal two days later, he was "a merger artist who resented making just one deal at a time."
In the mid-1970s, his prime deal-making days as CEO and chairman of United Technologies Corp., Gray had maintained a list of the 50 companies he sought to acquire.