Deceased February 16, 2005

View alumni profile (log in required)

In Memory

Bray Chapman died at home in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Feb. 16, 2005, at the age of 93. 

At Amherst, Bray was a member of Scarab, Student Council, Beta Theta Pi and the debating team that won the Little Three Championship.  He was also manager of the soccer team and served as chair of the Junior Prom Committee.  He graduated cum laude, with a major in Economics. 

Following graduation, he remained active as an Amherst volunteer, serving as Chairman of the Alumni Fund Committee and President of the Amherst Club of Chicago.  He received the Amherst Medal for Eminent Service in 1969.

He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1936 and practiced law in Chicago for fifty years.  He was a senior partner and on the management committee of three law firms including Lord, Bissel & Kadyk and Vedder, Price, Kaufman and Kammholz.

Shortly before Pearl Harbor, he entered and won a national competition for a Captaincy in the Judge Advocate General Corps. His military career included serving in the J.A.’s section of the army base command in North Africa and Italy, as Staff J.A. in the Army Air Force and the eighty-eighth Infantry Division and as Executive Officer of the Assistant J.A.G.’s office attached to General Eisenhower’s Command in North Africa.  He won the Bronze Star, three Battle Stars and the Italian decoration of Knight Officer of the Crown.  He retired from military service as a Colonel.

After World War II he engaged in a number of charitable activities, the most significant of which was the Presbyterian Home in Evanston, IL where he served as Chairman for 17 years.

He married Martha McCaig on May 16, 1955. 

He was an avid sailor and skier.  His most ambitious sail was an eleven month cruise with Martha from Bergen, Norway to Palm Beach in their auxiliary ketch Gabbiano, later the subject of his book Dream Cruise.

He was also an active member of the U.S. Ski Patrol and skied in this country and abroad.  After retiring from full time practice, he moved to Snowmass, CO where he lived and skied for ten years until he moved back to Chapel Hill.

Martha Chapman