Eula B. Gray

Eula Mae Blackman Gray, 91, a native of North Carolina and longtime resident of Baltimore, passed away on March 8, 2026, surrounded by the family she loved and shaped with extraordinary care. Born on March 18, 1934, she was the oldest daughter of Patricia Rawles Blackman of Northampton County, North Carolina and Cyril Blackman of Trinidad and Tobago. Her early years wove together the threads of several cities - Atlanta, New York and Baltimore, along with quiet summers at her grandmother's farm in the Occoneechee Neck of northeastern North Carolina. From the age of 12 she was raised with love by her Aunt Alice and Uncle Tawfeek "Pop" Sedka at the family's home in the Fairfield neighborhood of Baltimore where many of her aunts, uncles, and especially cousins lived. A woman of sharp intellect and quiet determination, Eula graduated from Frederick Douglass High School and went on to earn her undergraduate degree from Morgan State College in 1956. She then became one of the first women to enroll in Loyola College graduate degree programs, completing her master's degree in 1960 with distinction. Her academic achievements were not merely personal milestones. In 1956 she became one of two Black teachers to integrate Benjamin Franklin Junior High School, where her poise and superior credentials regularly outshone those of the administrators who might have underestimated her. It was there that one of her colleagues told her that her mother was selling a big brick house on Fairview Avenue, in Forest Park, Ultimately, the Sedkas bought the house and raised nieces, nephews, cousins, grandchildren, and foster kids. After her 1959 marriage to Walter "Jack" Gray, his career as a civil engineer with the Veteran's Administration carried their growing family around the country to places from Boston, MA to Linden, NJ, Baltimore, San Juan, PR, Tampa, FL, Fanwood, NJ and finally back to Baltimore When the family moved to San Juan in 1965, Eula arrived with her three daughters - Jackie, Monica and Shari-and by her own cheerful admission, no Spanish skills. By the time they relocated to Tampa in 1970, they had added a son, Walter III, to the family, and she still didn't speak Spanish. But she had, as always, made a home. Wherever Eula went she made friends - and she made them effortlessly. She was equally comfortable and charming with government officials, new neighbors, old friends, and strangers who had never before shared a table with someone who looked like her. Her warmth was genuine, her charm disarming, and her presence a kind of social grace that could not be taught. She carried across decades and zip codes the deep friendships she formed in junior high school with Martha "Ferg" Johnson Leeper and Loretta Smith - bonds that lasted a lifetime. She volunteered at her children's schools and library, at the New All Saint's Church food pantry, and the oncology department of St. Agnes Hospital. Following Jack's retirement, the couple traveled extensively by train across North America - a fitting adventure for two people who had spent a lifetime on the move together. Eula Mae Blackman Gray leaves behind a legacy written not just in the children she raised and the students she taught, but in the communities she built and the countless lives she touched with her grace, her laughter and her tireless belief in people. She was a woman who made every place she lived a little better - and every person she knew a little more certain that they mattered. She is survived by her children Jacquelyn, Monica, Shareyfah, and Walter III; her sister, Mary Chestnut; her brother Kirk Fancher; and niece Rachel Fancher.

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Eula B. Gray

March 18, 1934 - March 8, 2026