ENTOMOLOGIST AND FRIEND, ALICE GRAY

        When I got my first tarantula, with the help of my biology teacher, Mr. Whan, I had a pet unique enough in 1964 to be published in Ripley's Believe-It-or-Not, but I had no idea how to care for it.  In desperation I wrote to the American Museum of Natural History, and its entomologist Alice Gray answered the call.  Not only that, but she and I remained good pen-pals for fifteen years!  I've posted all her letters in this blog.  I went on to write the first book on pet tarantula care, found the original American Tarantula Society, and edit the bi-monthly Tarantula Times.  I let Alice Gray know that I wanted to tell the ATS about her, and she helped me do that, too.  This information is taken from the September/October 1979 issue of the Tarantula Times.   ~ Dale Lund

 

MEMBER PROFILE - ALICE GRAY

 

       Born June 7, 1914, Schenectady, New York, first child and only daughter of George Francis Gray, an electrical engineer whose family has been American since the Revolution, and Carlena Gerlach Gray, whose parents were born in Germany and ran a farm.  They met as children in Ohio, when his father took him to her father's farm to buy a little red pig.  I have one brother, five years my junior.  He lives in California, has four grown children, and detests tarantulas.

       I was a happy child, but must have been a difficult one - intellectually precocious, socially retarded, scornful of my peers but pathologically shy - comfortable only with adults and animals.  Since Father's profession dictated that the family move often, my schooling was fragmentary and largely private.  In public schools I was convulsed with terror of classmates who could not understand my interests and made me the butt of ridicule, sometimes even of physical abuse.  A resident grandmother, who read aloud to me anything that was of interest to her, gave me a taste for books; but it is said that I did not read myself until I was twelve.  Then a perceptive teacher sent my mother a note: "Stop reading to Alice, she's illiterate."  My horrified parent put an instant end to Grandmother's entertainment.  The first thing I read to myself was Sherlock Holmes.

       Throughout my childhood, I had a procession of pets, vertebrate and invertebrate.  Mother tolerated anything, so long as I took care of it myself.  She was a gardener, and always said she couldn't lose - if insects ate up the garden, at least Alice would enjoy the insects.  The only spider I recall was a small amber-colored one that had a web in the kitchen window.  A guest of my mother's, eager to do her a kindness, killed my spider.  I lay down on the kitchen floor and threw a first-class screaming and kicking tantrum.  The poor woman never understood to the day of her death, only about ten years ago, what she had done to offend me.

       I was exposed to all the usual cultural subjects - music, dancing, art - but art was the only one that took.  My favorite toys were tools.  I was taught how to use them as soon as I could hold them, and never had a knife that wasn't sharp. Mother taught me to cook, sew and garden.  Father taught me to mend electrical appliances, locks and plumbing.  Nobody could teach me manuscript, mathematics or grammar - not in any of the several languages I encountered during my schooling.  I was and am a linguistic and mathematical moron, competent only in my native tongue and barely able to balance a checkbook.

       The small preparatory school I attended as a teenager expected me to go to Vassar and become a Latin scholar.  They were horrified when I chose to go to Cornell and study entomology.  But I was acting on the best advice available to me.  My parents, who had never tried to force me into a conventional mold, and who knew my failings as well as my strengths, went into conference with me about what I would really like to do with my life.  I was almost certain to remain a spinster; I took after Father, whose female relatives were very largely single. I was too shy for any competitive occupation.  I could make anything out of anything, but craftwork afforded a precarious livelihood.  There remained my love of animals.  How could I make a living out of that?  Not as a veterinarian; they have to kill and dissect numberless animals in the course of their training, and I was much too squeamish for that.  How about insects then?  There was always work for an entomologist, because insects are of great economic importance.  I could bear to kill and dissect an insect, although I didn't like to, and still don't.  Where could a timid female entomologist find work?  (This was 1933, or thereabouts, and female scientists were not in demand.)  Why not the American Museum?  I had known and loved the museum all my life.  It was as sheltered an environment as any outside a mental hospital.  I could use my educated hands as well as any mind I might have.  The perfect answer!  So, I wrote to Dr. Frank Lutz, then head of the insect department of the museum, and asked him where I should go and what I should study if I hoped someday to work for him.  Dr. Lutz was kind enough to answer me seriously and in detail.  It was by his advice that I went to Cornell and studied entomology and other aspects of natural history, writing and scientific illustration.

       I will remember registration day.  The graduate student in charge of registration for the entomology department was unwilling to risk admitting a female, and sent somebody to wake up the professor to sign the papers.  I remember, too, the instructor who, when I said I hoped to work at the American Museum of Natural History, exclaimed, "What could you do there?"  His was the course, taxonomy, that I elected to flunk when I was in danger of being graduated in February - a thing I wished to avoid but which my high average and many credits dictated.  Confident that I was a bad enough taxonomist to flunk without effort if I simply refrained from study, I wrote across the top of my paper, "Ave, Caesar! Moritura te saluto!" - the Roman greeting of gladiators to the emperor at the beginning of the "games" in the coliseum, but in the feminine singular - "I who am about to die salute thee."  In due course I got my paper back: "95%  Sic semper tyrannis." (So be it ever with tyrants.")  How could I have known he was a Latin scholar?  If he thought he had found another in me, he was dreadfully mistaken!  I don't remember how I managed it, but I did escape February graduation by a quarter of a point.

       A little before graduation I wrote again to Dr. Lutz, saying, in effect, "Now I have done everything you told me to do.  When do I go to work?"  He answered that there was no opening, and I took a job teaching handicrafts to the Girl Scouts.  I was in camp that summer when somebody left the museum, and Dr. Lutz offered me the post - that of a technician.  He even kept it open until the end of the camping season, saying that he had been a camp director himself and knew what it was like to lose his staff in the middle of the summer!  On the 1st of October, 1937, I entered the service of the American Museum of Natural History, and here I shall remain until they carry me out or antiquity renders me incapable. 

       On my first morning, Dr. Lutz introduced me to all the scientists so that they could reassure themselves that I was big and strong enough.  (They had wanted a man.)  My first task was dusting glass-topped drawers of moths stored in an attic and untouched for years.  The amount of soap I consumed every night was phenomenal!  When I passed this test, I was set to mounting insects.  That was easy, but dull, and I was glad to have the routine broken by stints of net-making and the preparation of insect-killing jars.  (My predecessor had nearly killed himself doing that, so I was exceedingly careful, and in consequence was saddled with the annual crop of killing jars long after I had graduated from technical to educational work.)  A chore I enjoyed was caring for the live insects and spiders then exhibited in the Insect Hall.  That is where I met my first Tarantula.  The Insect Hall is no more - demolished to make a storage place for banqueting equipment - but I still keep an assortment of livestock under the pretense of using it in teaching.

       From insect mounting, I progressed to the drawing of making models of insects for exhibition.  Having made the enlarged models, I built the settings, enlarged to the same scale.  Eventually, without anybody taking notice, the exhibition hall became my responsibility; and then, gradually, public letters of inquiry about insects were handed over to me.  Education is one of the three functions of a museum.  The others are curatorial (getting while the getting is good and keeping safe till somebody wants the things) and research.  But scientists usually regard time spent in teaching as wasted.  The museum entomologists were only too happy to have somebody take it off their hands.

       Dr. Lutz died before my metamorphosis into an educator was complete, but he set the course.  None of his many successors has seen fit to alter it.  When Cornell had tried to make me a teacher, I resisted the idea.  Now I perceived the value of some formal training in the line, and began to take classes at night and on weekends at Teachers' College, Columbia University.  This is a graduate school, and all my classmates were teachers, but the University was broad-minded enough to view my museum work as education and in the fullness of time awarded me an M.A.  The one vivid memory I have of this interlude is of the course in "Fundamentals of Education," required of all students.  Six professors lectured us all - perhaps two thousand - for two hours a session, and then we broke up into groups of fifteen to discuss what had been said.  At the end, we had learned three things: 1) People are different. 2) That's a good thing. 3) There is more than one way to be right.  I admit that these are things every teacher ought to know, but I could not imagine that there was any practicing teacher who did not already know them.  I was wrong there.  The group of teachers I taught during that field course really did believe that there is only one way to be right and that all people ought to be the same!  That is a lesson I shall never forget!

       The museum took note of my academic achievement by promoting me to the rank of Scientific Assistant, the title I still hold.  I suppose it was at about this time that I wrote the only book about insects that I have thus far attempted - a little book for children.  It was commissioned by the publisher as part of a series, and appeared under the title of The Adventure Book of Insects.  It was eventually sold to the Golden Press, and only a few years ago I saw a paperback edition called The Golden Question and Answer Book of Insects.  I still receive occasional letters from people who have read it.

       During the next few years I wrote a series of seven leaflets about making and using insect collection equipment and mounting and preserving the catch.  I illustrated them myself.  They are still in print, after more than twenty years.  We distribute these leaflets free, as a means of avoiding the writing of long letters about collecting techniques.

       In those days, the museum published a magazine for children, and I was a frequent contributor.  On the side, I assumed the direction of the Junior Division of the New York Entomological Society, a group of teenagers interested chiefly in field entomology.  Once a year I took them on a two week field trip to a place as far afield as we could afford - usually to the museum's research stations in Arizona and Florida.  Membership was limited, and for many years we had a waiting list.  Either the fashion in science among students has changed, or I have lost my touch.  This group petered out and last year had to be discontinued for want of members.

       Dr. William Gertsch came to the museum at about the same time I did.  As you certainly know, he was particularly interested in tarantulas.  He always had a few live ones, and I often saw him handle them, but had no ambition to emulate him.  When he used one in any public demonstration, he tied a cord around it, between the second and third pair of legs, partly to reassure the audience and partly to make sure that the spider would not suffer a fatal fall.  It took two people to do the job, one to hold the spider and one to tie the knot.  I was occasionally the knot-tier.  I became handler in an emergency.  A motion picture crew was scheduled to come to the museum to photograph a tarantula, and Dr. Gertsch was ill and couldn't be present.  I was elected to fill the gap.  In theory, I knew how to do it.  I'm afraid I grasped the unfortunate arachnid far more firmly than was necessary, but both of us survived.  I have been handling tarantulas ever since, but it was more than a decade before I could bring myself to handle a scorpion, and I still have no confidence in centipedes.  Of course, handlability is a species characteristic.  There are nervous and aggressive species that I do not care to alarm.

       Nowadays I spend most of my time answering questions put to me in person, over the telephone or by letter.  If there is any radio or TV work or any exhibition work, I do this; but there isn't much.  During the academic year I spend one day a week in an elementary school, showing my arthropod pets to the children and talking about them.  If it does no more than spare the children the dread of "bugs" that plagues so many people all their lives, it will have been worth the time.  I am very popular - chiefly because I am cheap.  The museum pays my salary and the school pays the cost of my transportation and gives me lunch.  When I retire (if I ever do), I'm going to charge a hundred dollars a day.  Then we shall see how good I am!

       Has it occurred to you that this doesn't sound much like the timid girl who chose the museum as a sheltered workshop?  If anybody tells you that the basic personality congeals in infancy and cannot be changed, send him around to me.  My metamorphosis has been complete.  I suppose the change began when, at the age of forty or thereabouts, I made an epochal discovery: People were not really scrutinizing me to find something to criticize; they just wanted to know what I was thinking about them!  If I could convey that on the whole I liked what I was seeing, they would be happy and like me in return.  Nowadays I love people, all ages, colors and degrees of attainment, and take it for granted that they love me.  As far as I know, they do.  (The exceptions I prefer not to know about.)

       My profession apart, I have had a succession of hobbies.  For several years I was a student of the history of costume and made dolls dressed in the fashions of other times and places, as meticulously researched as circumstances allowed.  For a time, I made pottery, literally from the ground up.  I hold the "Thanks Badge" of the Girl Scouts for having spent many successive summer vacations teach handicrafts, without charge, in the local scout camp.  During that time I was "Skipper" of a troop of Girl Scout Mariners.  For the past fifteen years I have devoted most of my leisure to origami - "Japanese" paperfolding - in which I am accounted expert, though not a "master."  I have written a book about origami - The Magic of Origami - but it was printed in Japan without proofreading, and contains so many typographical errors that I don't boast about it.  The origami-decorated Christmas tree at the American Museum of Natural History has become a holiday tradition.  (It is annually prepared under my direction by volunteer folders, most of them taught by me.)  For about thirteen years I have been editor, and often author and illustrator, of The Origamian, a little periodical devoted to paperfolding.  A really good beginners' book of origami is one of the projects I am saving for the time when I can no longer travel a hundred miles a day to work (50 miles each way).

       Looking over the list of things you wanted to know, I find I have forgotten to list my pet likes and dislikes.  Well - here goes: 

Things that enrage, disgust, or simply bore me -

-Deliberate cruelty.

-Trade unions (Damn their insolence!).

-TV (It has given us a generation of brainless nincompoops who can't even entertain themselves on a rainy afternoon.  Our worst enemy could have done us no greater disservice.)

-Modern "art" and modern popular "music."  Pure raw emotion requiring neither skill in the execution nor comprehension in the appreciation.  No doubt therapeutic to the performers, but why afflict other people with their catharsis?

-Sport - the organized professional kind.  I can see doing physical and even competitive things for pleasure, but to devote time and money to watching other people do them?

-Selfishness - the heedless casual sort that tears up wilderness with dune buggies and snowmobiles, clutters cities and parks with cans, bottles and wastepaper, and defaces public places with assertions of identity.

-Seafood.  No reason.  I just abominate it.

-Housework.  I am the world's worst and most reluctant housekeeper.

Things that delight, gratify, and entertain me:

-That magic instant when ideas previously unrelated click together to form a new concept - "The shock of recognition" I think the psychologists call it.  Best of all is seeing this happen to someone else through something I have said or done.

-Verbal virtuosity - great precision and grace in the exercise of our one distinctively human accomplishment.  We are blessed with the world's most versatile and flexible language; how poorly we use it.

-Sensation - not scandal, but the employment of the senses: The tumult of a thunder storm, walking barefooted at the edge of the sea, a night vibrant with the voices of frogs and insects, the feel of a purring cat, a happy juxtaposition of colors, the scent of baking bread, the flavors of fruits.  The world is full of these small pleasures.  Who needs to carry a blaring radio?

-Books - the accumulated wit and wisdom of humanity, in absolutely no danger of becoming exhausted. 

-Making things - anything, from a mud pie to an evening gown, or even an automobile, should opportunity offer.

       I still live in Norwalk, Connecticut, the town my father selected as a good place for a factory while I was in Cornell.  I live alone, save for a household of cats (four at present).  I am allergic to cats, but even my allergist understands that something has to be glad to see me come home, and I cannot love a goldfish.  I am now 65.  (Only the recent outlawing of mandatory retirement before 70 saved me from a retirement that I hope would have been premature.)  I have been overweight all my adult life, and now I am paying for it.  Asthma and arthritis have slowed me down.  If, at my age, I can have a goal, it is to go on giving - information, encouragement and what help I can - as long as possible, and never to be a burden to anyone.  My life has been unspectacular, but singularly happy, and in my good fortune I feel an obligation to share that happiness.

 

_______

 

Alice Gray passed away on April 27, 1994.