Mamon Augusta Gray (1889-1984)

From the 1939-40 Arizona legislative composite.

                                                                                                        
   Three-term Arizona state representative Mamon Augusta Gray was a native of Mississippi and a resident of Texas prior to his relocation to Cochise County, Arizona in the early 1920s. Despite serving multiple terms in his state's legislature and living to age 95, Gray's life is so obscure that his Arizona legislative database biography consists of just two lines. With such minimal information available, Gray's biography here will be brief, and this author is amazed that considering his overall obscurity, a photograph of him has come to light. 
  The son of John Tidwell and Harriett Lou Dow (Gafford) Gray, Mamon Augusta Gray was born in Union County, Mississippi on October 9, 1889. The origins behind the unusual names Mamon Augusta remain unknown at this time, and Gray himself looks to have preferred the initials "M.A.", as the majority of period legislative documents record him under just his initials. His education extended through grammar and high school and by the 1910s was residing in Port Arthur, Texas. Gray married in that town in January 1915 to Annie Shaw (birthdate unknown) and later had four children, Mamon Augusta Jr. (died in infancy in 1915), Billy G., Mark, and Eleanor.
  Mamon A. Gray and his family removed from Texas to Arizona at an unknown date, and in the 1920 census are recorded as residents of Douglas in Cochise County. He would reside here for a number of years afterward and is remarked as being a barber, as per his legislative biography. Remarked as being a "champion of organized labor",  Gray was elected as a representative from Cochise County in the Arizona legislature in late 1934 and began his first term in January of the following year. This term saw him chair the committee on Labor and serve on the committee on Public Health, and he would win a second term in 1936. 
  The 1937-38 session saw Gray again chair the committee on Labor and was a member of the committee on County and County Affairs, and Public Health. In August 1937, while still an incumbent representative, Gray was appointed by Governor Rawghlie Clement Stanford as one of three members on the State Board of Barber Examiners. His total length of service on that board remains undetermined, though notice has been found as to his being a board member again from 1947-51.
  Gray won a third house term in 1938 and from 1939-40 sat on three new committees, those being the Judiciary; Petitions and Memorials; and Suffrages and Elections. Gray would resign from the house in September 1940 and in the years following his resignation was a resident of Yuma, Arizona. The remaining four decades of Gray's life largely remain unknown, with an exception being a 1975 newspaper notice regarding his involvement in a car-motorcycle accident in Yuma. Gray later resided in Prescott in Yavapai County and celebrated his 90th birthday in 1979. He died in Prescott on October 12, 1984, just three days following his 95th birthday and was interred at the Arizona Pioneer Home Cemetery in that city.