Truckin' on the Western Branch

Glenn Gray Glenn Gray grew up in Norfolk, graduated from Maury, and went to Old Dominion when it was a division of William and Mary. He joined George T. McLean Industries and McLean Equipment Company in the mid-1960s and became the treasurer/secretary. McLean was a self-made millionaire developer who began his career as a coal dealer but went into the construction and concrete business, building dry docks at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard during World War II. He also developed the Sweetbriar, Green Acres, and Sterling Point neighborhoods as well as numerous other projects around the area including Cavalier Manor.

Gray said, He had a temper but never expressed it to me or anyone who worked for him except perhaps an occasional driver. His daughter, Jean, raised horses in Green Acres and had a house there where she lived with Dick Davis until they divorced in the early 1960s. She continued to show her horses in Kentucky.

She and their adopted daughter moved to a farm in Kentucky without her father’s approval, but he had an addition put on her house there as his quarters and was out there often for horse shows, etc. But George had a hard time adapting to the slower pace in Kentucky. Jean and George were close, but after some weeks of visiting, Jean would call me and ask for a reason to send George home because he was running off the staff.

She ran a big operation, a full breeding establishment with 90 to 100 horses. It was a very expensive hobby. She never remarried and died in 2012.

George T. McLean Industries

Glenn Gray. Image by Sheally

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