Professor H. L. Bray       
        Personal
                Hubert Edward Bray (1936-2025)         
                        Hubert Evelyn Bray (1889-1978)     
                        Gertrude Boxley Bray (1897-1987)     


My dad was born Hubert Edward Bray on September 9, 1936 in Houston, Texas, the youngest of three children, to Gertrude Bray (maiden name Boxley) and Hubert Evelyn Bray, who was a professor of mathematics at Rice Institute, later renamed Rice University. My dad had two older sisters, Anne Katherine (born 1927) and Marjorie (born 1929) and grew up in a 1800 sq. ft. two-story house at 2031 Dunstan Rd. in Houston, TX, walking distance to Rice Institute. To escape the uncomfortably hot summers in Houston, the family spent 3 months every summer in Eldora, Colorado in an authentic log cabin originally used by gold miners that my grandparents fixed up over the years and named "Aftermath."

As a child, my dad was free to roam the neighborhoods making friends with other kids and exploring as he liked. In Eldora, he did the same, and fell in love with the natural beauty of the Colorado Rockies. He went everywhere with his best friend Buddy, a fox terrier who would jump up on the back of his bicycle rack and go for a ride with him. Later he had another dog Blitz, a doberman pinscher, who could jump over impressively tall walls.

From a very early age, my dad had a fascination with machinery. One day my grandfather came home to find that my dad, perhaps around 13 years old, had taken apart his car's engine to see how everything worked. My dad reassembled the engine successfully. Around the same age, my dad begged for a James motor scooter, which he got and drove everywhere. By 16, my dad managed to convince his dad to buy him his own car, which my dad immediately modified for hot rod racing. My dad had the fastest street legal car in Houston for a time, with his only loss being to A.J. Foyt, later to become the first 4-time winner of the Indianapolis 500.

Later in life, in his 30's, my dad learned to fly single engine Cessna aircraft, and once flew from Houston to Colorado with friends "to get some fresh Coors beer." He also owned motorcycles, notably a Norton, a Kawasaki Z1-900, and a Honda V65 Sabre into his 60's which he would take out early on Sunday mornings to drive in the countryside. Over his life, from his James to his V65 Sabre, my dad counted 10 incidents which resulted in injury, so he strongly discouraged this hobby which he enjoyed so much. Still, when I watch the opening scene of Top Gun: Maverick where Maverick is tinkering with an engine, thoroughly washes his hands and arms to get the grease off, all the way up to his elbows, and then enjoys riding his Kawasaki into work, I can't help but think of my dad.

My dad attended the University of Houston. Having struggled with math in high school, one of my dad's proudest achievements in his early life was getting an A+ in his calculus course. He worked every problem in the book, going well beyond the assigned homework. He said many times that he wished he had been a serious student from a young age.

Between the ages of 19 and 21, my dad started lifting weights. He worked out every other day for 2 years, never missing a workout. At 5'9" and 165 pounds, he could bench press 285 pounds and military press 200 pounds, which was unusual for a regular person in 1957. He then decided that he was strong enough, and basically never worked out another day in his life.

In his early 20's, my dad was a fun, happy-go-lucky guy living at home with his parents who had a lot of friends and was always looking for a good time. He had various jobs, but nothing he was passionate about. His first true career opportunity came in 1963 when John P. Nash, a vice president of Lockheed Missiles and Space Company who had received his Ph.D. in mathematics at Rice Institute where he became friends with my grandfather, invited my dad to become an assistant computer programmer for the company in the San Francisco Bay Area in Sunnyvale, California. My dad jumped at the opportunity. The move to California prompted my mom and dad, who had been dating for around a year, to get married at the courthouse in Palo Alto, California, on October 4, 1963. That same day, my dad bought my mom a brand new Cadillac at the dealership to celebrate. 

After a few years in California, my parents moved back to Houston where they both got jobs at NASA - my dad programming computers for a NASA contractor, and my mom working for Delta airlines in their NASA office. Then from 1968-1976 (at least), my dad joined the faculty of the University of Texas School of Public Health as a senior systems programmer, which was his favorite job of his life. While it didn't pay great, my dad could live nearby and commuted on his motorcycle. He left this job for a much bigger salary as a vice president of an oil company, which unfortunately went out of business a year or two later, at which time he returned to working for NASA contractors, mostly McDonnell Douglas.

My dad was a computer programmer from 1963 until his retirement in 1993 - from the dawn of the digital age to the creation of the world wide web and internet browsers. He began when computers were the size of small rooms and computer programs were stored on punch cards. When I was growing up in the 1980's, my dad always had the latest personal computer in our home so that we could learn how to program too. I particularly remember our TI-99 4A from around 1982 which used an audio cassette to store programs, but notably had color graphics. Later in the 80's we had an Intel 80386 computer for many years. My dad was always excited by the amazing progress being made in computer technology, and always had to have the latest, greatest personal computer.

My parents had two kids, myself in 1970 and my brother Clark in 1971, and moved into a 2200 sq. ft. one-story house at 5507 Valkeith in Houston, Texas, on my first birthday which my parents lived in for the rest of their lives. Every summer we would take a 2 to 3 week trip to the family cabin in Colorado, in addition to visiting my mom's parents in Edcouch, Texas 2 or 3 times each year. We'd see my dad's parents most weekends. Sometimes my dad would buy a family sized bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken which he'd bring over for everyone to share for Sunday lunch.

In the photos below (which we have because my dad also had a lifelong love of photography), you'll see that my dad also coached my Westbury Little League baseball teams for many years. "You can do it!" is a phrase my dad shouted from the dugout many times as a coach. When I was 8 years old, my dad was the head coach of the Roadrunners, and I played third base. We won the championship that year, which my dad enjoyed immensely. We were underdogs in the championship game against the undefeated Cardinals, and this was the first year my dad was head coach. We were not supposed to win, so when we did, we were just as surprised as everyone else. My dad took the whole team out for dinner at Pipe Organ Pizza that evening, and then to a Houston Astros game the following week. 

Around this time, when my dad was in his early 40's, he was larger than life to me. As an 8-12 year old, it seemed like my dad knew everything and could do anything. He was on the cutting edge of computer science, was a great baseball coach, had a lot of cool friends - some hilarious, rode motorcycles and flew airplanes, could fix cars or anything else, knew more math and physics than anyone else I knew, and could beat coworkers 20 years younger than him at arm wrestling. He was always very social, enjoyed his good friends, and would do practically anything for anyone who asked him nicely.

As my dad got older, he transitioned into a proud father and grandfather who got most of his enjoyment from living the simple life with my mom and from seeing his family grow with marriages and grandchildren. When he was 70, I took him to a Duke basketball game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, after which he was hooked for life, never missing a game on TV.

My dad passed away at the age of 88 from a hemorrhagic stroke on March 9, 2025, two days after losing consciousness in his favorite chair at home on the evening of March 7, 2025 where he was discovered the next morning by his good friend Larry. He is survived by his sister Anne Katherine Berling, his two sons Hubert and Clark and their wives Heidi and Holly, and his seven grandchildren William, Emily, Andrew, Jonathan, Caroline, Benjamin, and Avery.

The day before my dad lost consciousness, I had a very nice phone conversation with him reflecting on his life. He was very happy with how his life turned out, and was very proud of his kids and grandkids. He didn't want to die particularly, but wasn't afraid either, and felt like he had accomplished everything he had set out to do in his life. He was happy and content. We will miss him very much.

Hubert Lewis Bray
September 9, 2025

p.s. If you are curious about my dad's perspectives on parenting, click here.