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 Professor
Emeritus Wendell Wray died on Sunday, August 24, 2003,
in San Francisco, CA.
Wendell Wray was a native Pittsburgher, whose father,
an engineering graduate of Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee
Institute, was the first black engineer hired by Duquesne
Light in Pittsburgh. The son of Arthur J. and Mamie Quarles
Wray, Wendell grew up in Beltzhoover, and remembered
that when he watched the lights come on as dusk crept
across the city, his mother would tell him that his father
was lighting up the city of Pittsburgh! He graduated
from South Hills High School, where he mastered the Spanish
language, and learned the art of making mobiles by studying
the work of Alexander Calder. He then did military service
in the United States Army during the second World War.
Upon his return to civilian life, he accepted a scholarship
under the GI Bill to attend a small liberal arts college
in faraway Maine. Sight unseen, he entered Bates College
in Lewiston ME for what he described as the four happiest
years of his life. He was the Poet Laureate of his class,
and his poetry was celebrated at the class’s Fiftieth
Reunion in 2000. During those years at Bates, Wendell
also served the black community in Pittsburgh with his
summers of service at Camp James Weldon Johnson, this
city's Urban League camp for young black city kids. He
graduated from Bates in 1950, Phi Beta Kappa in Spanish
and Psychology, and returned to Pittsburgh. He knew then
that he wanted to be a librarian, and entered the library
science program at the Carnegie Institute of Technology,
and graduated with his MLS in 1952. He was the first
African American male to graduate from the library school,
and the first African American male hired by the Carnegie
Library of Pittsburgh, for whom he worked for seven years.
In 1959, Wendell moved to New York City and began work
at the New York Public Library, a career that spanned
14 years and had him serving in the Schomburg Center
for Research in Black Culture, and directing the North
Manhattan Library Project, an cultural outreach program
that brought arts and humanities programs and collections
to one of New York's hard-core inner city areas. While
in New York, he was encouraged by Alex Haley, the author
of Roots, to study at the newly-established Columbia
University program in Oral History, where began his personal
and professional fascination with this approach to historical
and literary documentation.
Upon his return to Pittsburgh in 1973, he began his
many years of service as a faculty member in the University
of Pittsburgh's library school, the academic successor
to the Carnegie Tech program from which he had graduated
21 years earlier and from whom he had received its 1973
Distinguished Alumnus Award. He taught countless students
about reference and collections development, public libraries,
and oral history collections. He taught about library
services to the underserved, and about African-American
bibliography. He was beloved by his students for his
experience, his very caring approach to their professional
education, and his absolute integrity and his professional
demeanor.
He remained at the University of Pittsburgh in the School
of Information Sciences for 15 years, with a two-year
leave in 1981-83 to return to the New York Public Library
as Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture. Upon his retirement from Pitt in 1988, he was
unanimously awarded Emeritus status by his colleagues.
Wray was an inveterate traveler, especially in the Hispanic
world where his fluency in Spanish was an asset. He was
particularly fond of visiting Spain and Puerto Rico.
He moved to the Bay area in California in 1992, but maintained
close ties with colleagues in Pittsburgh. He lived on
the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland CA, and was active
in the Episcopal parishes of the Church of the Advent
of Christ the King in San Francisco, and St. Paul’s
Church in Oakland. Wendell Wray is survived by a sister,
Louise Wray Stewart, two nieces, Lynne and Lisa Stewart,
several cousins, and close friends in Pittsburgh, New
York, and the Bay area.
A requiem service will be held in San Francisco at the
Episcopal Church of the Advent of Christ the King on
October 4, 2003, at 1:00 p.m. A memorial service in Pittsburgh
is scheduled for Friday, October 17, 2003,
at 11:00 a.m., at Calvary Episcopal Church. At his request,
his ashes will be distributed over the lake at Camp James
Weldon Johnson where he served as a counselor in the
1940’s.
Memorial contributions may be made to a fund which is
being established in the Department of Library and Information
Science; please make checks payable to the University
of Pittsburgh and mark them for the “Wendell Wray
Memorial Fund,” and send them to Andrew D. Falk,
Director of Development, School of Information Sciences,
135 N. Bellefield Avenue, Pittsburgh PA 15260. Questions
may be directed to Associate Professor Ellen Detlefsen,
at 412-624-9444 or by email to ellen@mail.sis.pitt.edu
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