After decades of helping to set the direction for Powell River Association for Community Living (PRACL), Gerry Gray is taking his retirement.
Gray first volunteered with PRACL in 1968 when the organization was called Powell River Association of the Mentally Retarded (PRAMR).
“I may be the one who was there 45 years, but I wasn’t the one who did everything,” said Gray. “It was all volunteers and we worked together.”
He attended his first meeting of the organization in 1968 at the request of Jean Pike who Gray described as the “driving force behind the organization.” He had met Pike the week before in front of the old Safeway store selling $2 rummage tickets to raise money.
A veteran journalist, Gray wrote a weekly column for the Powell River News about what he saw around town. He related Pike’s plight to the community.
“If any association ever needed help from anybody it was them,” said Gray. “They were in this old condemned building with 40-watt light bulbs, $25 overdrawn at the bank and didn’t know how they were going to get it back.”
Gray was first involved with fundraising and helped raise money to build a sheltered workshop for young adults with physical and mental disabilities. He approached MacMillan Bloedel Ltd., owner of the Powell River mill at that time, for some help and it gave the association 11.5 acres on Artaban Street.
“The community went all out to help us along,” said Gray. “They knew that there were people with handicapped children and there was nothing they could do with them at home.”
In 1969 he started the Artaban Christmas Card Fund which helped raise $30,000 for building the sheltered workshop which, at the time, was seen by many as a way to give people with disabilities job skills. After petitioning the provincial government the organization was given matching funding.
“Believe me, once you dip your foot in that kind of water you just want to stay there,” he said.
Over the years his involvement deepened.
He went on to take the role of president. During the mid-1980s, when the institutions of Woodlands, Glendale and Tranquille closed their doors, Gray helped set up the residential care program that would bring countless people to group homes in Powell River. He became a director in 1992 when the first PRACL board was elected. He has remained a director since.
Over the course of his involvement with PRACL, the one thing that sticks out for Gray is the spirit of volunteerism in the community.
He watched as people volunteered to bring students back and forth to a school that had been established for children with disabilities, in the years prior to the provincial government providing special education classes in public schools. He watched teachers and support workers spend countless hours trying to help.
Gray said that the most memorable times over the years have been the camaraderie that he has had with the other volunteers.
“There’s nothing controversial about the work we did,” he said. “We were all there to help people. I always got a lift out of seeing the work we did.”
After spending half a lifetime helping to organize, Gray has finally decided to step back and take some time for travel, his grandchildren and his writing.
“The challenge of building something new is different than the challenge of keeping something going,” he said.
PRACL is honouring Gray at 7 pm on Thursday, March 14 at Community Living Place, 6831 Artaban Street.
