William Faux Gray ’55

Fauxie, a genial and much-admired classmate who loved to tell stories, often embellished, died July 24, 2022. As his son Chris noted, “There was always a grain of truth, but he liked to make things a little more exciting.” 

Fauxie was born Dec. 29, 1933, in Sayre, Pa. At New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Ill., he was class president and active in football. At Princeton, he joined Cap and Gown Club and majored in mechanical engineering. Senior year he roomed with Gordon Douglas, Pete Horne, Lew Gustafson, Steve McNamara, Ed Cervone, Paul Jaenicke, Randy Mooney, Steve Swensrud, Jim Seabrook, Dick Dillon, Barney Barnett, and Bill McRoberts. After Princeton and two years in the Army, he earned an MBA at Harvard. 

His first jobs were in computer sales and management with IBM, GE, and other large companies; then he founded and was president of Telemonitor.

After a divorce and a slack time, his Honda broke down on a highway. A woman in a bright red Pontiac Trans Am muscle car stopped and diagnosed his problem. Fauxie and Annie, a former nun who had once clerked in an auto parts store and then was head of a national secondary schools association, were happily married until her death in 2009.

They lived for more than 20 years in a rustic oceanfront house in Melbourne, Their beachfront was the destination for ancient sea turtles, which on moonlit nights would crawl up the beach to lay hundreds of their eggs, as they had for thousands of years.

Fauxie is survived by three children, Chris Gray, Robin Branagan, and Pam Acklam; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.