Gray, Thorne B.

Journalist for the Modesto Bee from 1966 to 1982, where he covered city and county government with and emphasis on California's Central Valley water issues, land use, and natural resources conservation.

Biography

Biographical Narrative

Thorne B. Gray (1937-1993), journalist, was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and grew up in Los Angeles, California. After graduating from Cornell University in 1960, he joined the U.S. Army serving with the U.N. Command in Korea, where he was a reporter for the Pacific Stars and Stripes . After leaving the Army in 1963, he attended Northwestern University in Illinois and received a master's degree in journalism in 1965.

Gray returned to California where he worked for the San Diego Evening Tribune and the Alhambra Post-Advocate before joining the Modesto Bee in Fresno in 1966. During his seventeen years at the Bee, Gray covered city and county government with an emphasis on California water issues, land use, and natural resources conservation. He reported extensively on the campaigns to preserve the Stanislaus and Tuolumne Rivers in the 1970s and the construction and filling of the New Melones Dam.

Gray wrote Quest for Deep Gold (1973), On this Land (1983), and The Stanislaus Indian Wars (1993), and co-authored California Political Almanac, The Tuolumne River, a 1970 Sierra Club report, as well as contributing to the Knights Ferry Handbook . He also served as editor of the Stanislaus County Historical Society quarterly journal, the Stanislaus Stepping Stones, for seven years. Gray was on the board of Central California Educational Television (KVIE-Channel 6) for three years and taught journalism at Stanislaus State University.

In 1982 Gray left the Modesto Bee and joined the Sacramento Bee's Capitol Bureau in 1983, reporting on the state budget. In October 1983, he took early retirement as a senior writer.

Sources:

Kane, William D. "Thorne Gray Dies at 55, Veteran Newsman, River Enthusiast, Region Historian," Modesto Bee, 21 April 1993, sec. B, p. 3.