Alton Bray, 100, dies; was SEMO's 'registrar emeritus'

Alton Bray, who graduated from Southeast Missouri State Teachers College almost 80 years ago and went on to serve several decades as the school's registrar, died Friday at The Chateau Girardeau. He was 100 years old.

Bray's relationship with the college, now known as Southeast Missouri State University, began in 1937 when he began his freshman year. He majored in physics and mathematics, graduating in 1941.

After a year as a high school teacher and basketball coach in Benton, Missouri, he spent the next year as a civilian radar instructor during World War II before returning to the college in 1943 to teach math and physics as part of the U.S. Navy's V-12 program.

Bray served two years as the school's purchasing agent before being appointed to serve as assistant registrar under E.F. Vaeth in 1946. When Vaeth died in 1951, Bray was named to succeed him and continued in that role until his retirement in 1984.

During his tenure as registrar, Bray served under four Southeast presidents -- W.W. Parker, Mark Scully, Robert Leestamper and Bill Stacy -- and was credited in 1962 with convincing Scully to purchase the college's first computer, a room-size IBM 1620, to help track the school's registration records.

The university's current president, Carlos Vargas, issued a statement Friday noting the thousands of lives Bray touched during his career at Southeast.

"Many alumni have recounted to me their wonderful memories of the care he took with their academic records as the university's registrar and the tremendous support he provided as they were students navigating their way through their college years," Vargas said. "And, as I have learned, he was a forerunner and proponent in bringing new technology to campus."

Bray, Vargas noted, earned the honorary title of "registrar emeritus" upon his retirement. "He left an extraordinary legacy at this university," Vargas said. "On behalf of Southeast, I would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to Alton's family. His contributions and his loyalty to his alma mater will not soon be forgotten."

Jane Stacy, who served 33 years as Southeast's alumni director, had an office next door to Bray's in the 1970s and 1980s.

"We would talk every day," Stacy said. "Nobody will every know how much Alton influenced Southeast over the years."

In recent years, Stacy regularly visited Bray at Chateau Girardeau, most recently two weeks ago when she, along with Baptist Student Center director Bruce Gentry, visited with Bray through a window of his first-floor room (indoor face-to-face visits are currently restricted at the senior living facility due to the COVID-19 pandemic).

"We started singing the (Southeast) Alma Mater," Stacy said. "Alton was in his wheelchair and started directing it as we sang."

Gentry said Bray's connection to the Baptist Student Center dates back to the BSC's founding in 1939.

"He had a lifelong legacy at the school and the BSC and was a board member for as long as we've had board members," Gentry said, adding that Bray was a deacon at Cape Girardeau's First Baptist Church for many years. "He was somebody you just loved spending time with and stood with the BSC through good times and bad times."

Several years ago, the BSC dedicated a classroom in Bray's name.

"Alton would have loved the fact that the room named for him has become a great hub for students to talk, hang out and do all sorts of things in," Gentry said.

Bray and his wife, Martha, met at a high school basketball game when he was 18 and she was 15. They were married 66 years before she died in 2011 at age 87. She was also a Southeast graduate as were their three children -- Ellen Busch, a retired school counselor in St. Louis; Mary Newberry, a retired teacher in Katy, Texas; and Dr. Jeffrey Bray, an anesthesiologist in Chesterfield, Missouri.

In addition to his children, Bray is survived by six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Arrangements are pending at Ford and Sons Funeral Home in Cape Girardeau.