Remembering a Beloved Wind Power Pioneer: Tom Gray

The wind community suffered a heartfelt loss with the news that former AWEA Executive Director Tom Gray passed away on August 30th, after a head injury sustained in a fall where he lived in Vermont.

Tom was a true industry pioneer, having worked across four decades to grow American wind energy and our association. In the 1980s he famously used his personal credit card at one point to keep AWEA afloat. After writing our first newsletters, he personally stamped and mailed them.

Beyond all that, he was a kind friend and a skilled and principled mentor for countless people in our industry.

Whenever we needed clarification on an obscure point of reference, we called upon Tom's encyclopedic knowledge of wind, leading many AWEAns to dub him the "Wind Wizard." He was an expert copy editor and opinion writer, and continued to edit this blog and grow his Twitter following well into "retirement."

There was simply no way to separate Tom from his love of wind power - on more than one occasion, he told me there is no better job in the world than working in wind.

His wife Linda wrote us: "You'll appreciate that Tom made me promise to spread some of his ashes at a wind farm. I have a Vermont project in mind."

Many of the people whom Tom influenced are also sharing stories on Facebook, such as on the page of Randy Swisher, who succeeded him as AWEA's CEO.

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