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The Jane Craige Gray '32 Library
C. Boyden Gray, a member of the NCS Board of Governors and father to NCS alumna Eliza Gray ’03, recently sat down to discuss the value of giving back to one’s school, his family’s gift of $3 million to build a new state-of the art library in Procter Hall, and the importance of supporting Educating Women for the World: The Campaign for NCS.
A former ambassador to the European Union and White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush, Boyden Gray has led a distinguished career punctuated with public service. In keeping with an extensive Gray family philanthropic tradition, he has served on the boards of numerous charitable, educational, and professional organizations. At NCS, he has served on the Board of Governors since 2004 and is Honorary Chair of the Woodley North Campaign Committee.
The Gray family has a long history of generously supporting education. “Of all the charitable activities that anyone can engage in, giving back to the school that educated them and their children should be their priority,” said Gray. “Because that’s the beginning of everything—the skills that you receive when you are young.”
“Schools like NCS can only survive if you have a strong donor base,” stressed Gray. And, giving back is essential at all levels—from the most generous institutional donors to the newest alumnae. “If you can get the big donors to commit a certain percentage,” explained Gray, “then you build that momentum.” Donors of all ages and at all levels will follow. “It does take leadership,” he added.
The Gray family began its relationship with NCS with the enrollment of Ambassador Gray’s mother, Jane Henderson Boyden Craige Gray ’32. The NCS reputation for high academic standards made it an easy decision for the Grays to return to NCS for their daughter’s education more than fifty years later. “NCS has a great reputation,” he added. “But what I see are girls who are extremely bright, confident, intellectually confident, but not arrogant.” And he has seen firsthand how his daughter’s education at NCS has prepared her for leadership in a challenging world. “Her sense of ethics, her sense of fairness, her sense of give and take with colleagues was a very strong theme. It was emphasized greatly at NCS when she was there, and she continues to have this sense of fairness, of what’s right, what’s fair, what’s the ethical thing to do. People have remarked about it, and I attribute that to NCS.”
The Jane Craige Gray '32 Library
In honor of his mother, who graduated from NCS before attending Vassar, Ambassador Gray and his family have generously committed to construct the Jane Craige Gray '32 Library, which will crown the top two floors of Procter Hall. The two-story library will include expanded space for student group work, upgraded technologies, and related support facilities. The top floor will hold the Central NCS Collection, the Faculty Collection, magazines, and two group study rooms.
The lower floor will hold a multimedia classroom and workroom, video library, distance learning classroom, five reading rooms, two activity rooms, a reference area, an archives room, and the librarian’s office. What inspired Gray to donate so generously? He wanted to memorialize his mother, an intelligent and talented woman who was “quite a character” and who died at the tender age of 37. Also, “I felt that I owed the school for what it did for my mother and my daughter,” explained Ambassador Gray. “I very much enjoyed my time there, my time on the Board, and time with other parents. It was a wonderful, irreplaceable period of my life.”
The lower floor will hold a multimedia classroom and workroom, video library, distance learning classroom, five reading rooms, two activity rooms, a reference area, an archives room, and the librarian’s office. What inspired Gray to donate so generously? He wanted to memorialize his mother, an intelligent and talented woman who was “quite a character” and who died at the tender age of 37. Also, “I felt that I owed the school for what it did for my mother and my daughter,” explained Ambassador Gray. “I very much enjoyed my time there, my time on the Board, and time with other parents. It was a wonderful, irreplaceable period of my life.”
