Area Marines Note Passing Of Legendary CMC, Gen. Al Gray

By Keith Oliver
   The U.S. Marines, abundantly represented in Lake County, lost one of their legends on March 10 when former Commandant, Gen. Alfred M. "Al" Gray, passed away in Alexandria, Virginia.
   Umatilla High and FSU football player David Ellis flew his Marine Corps Harrier jet to war during Gray's highly publicized, back-to-the-basics tenure as America's senior Marine from 1988 to 1992.
   And former Bulldog star quarterback Glen Key graduated from the Marines' first Gray-impacted, commando-like syllabus of the Infantry Officer Course.
   Not long after, Key was leading a contingent of Leathernecks in capturing more than 1,000 enemy prisoners on a desert island not far from the shores of Kuwait.
   Marine Cpl. Peyton Grinnell, known to ‘Outpost’ readers as the Sheriff of Lake County, met Gray in 1990 while deployed to Desert Storm with the Fleet Anti-terrorism and Security Team.
   The 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps "loved his troops," said retired Lt. Col. Jim Diehl, "and they loved him."
   Diehl, who describes himself as "as a proud, adopted Lake Countian thanks to Miss Dawn (the former Dawn Gosnell of Lake Seneca)," served Gray as a young captain when the iconic general commanded the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
   "Once, when I was in temporary command of a battalion," said Diehl, "the General choppered out to meet me at a training area for a discreet discussion to get a young corporal's financial crisis straightened out.
   "The corporal was deployed to a combat zone (Beirut, Lebanon) and his young and frightened new bride had rung up the couple's long-distance telephone bill to the tune of three thousand bucks," Capt. Diehl recalled.
   "General Gray convinced both the corporate and military hierarchy to just let that one go," Diehl said.
   Eustis' Robert Benn, who earned a Purple Heart in Vietnam at the age of 17, was a member of the last graduating class at Bates Avenue High School.
   The Eagle Scout, bandsman, and athlete remembers Gray as "a good man who helped break the integration logjam in the Marine Corps."
   Today a retired Sergeant Major and longtime Florida minister, Benn is especially fond of one of the renowned warrior-leader's favorite expressions:
   "Each of us has a life mission," Benn quoted Commandant Gray as saying, "which consists of doing all the good you can, for as many people as you can, for as long as you can."
   Gray was 95. Plans were still being finalized for a public viewing and ceremony in the National Capital Region, followed by the General's burial at Arlington National Cemetery.