A ‘larger than life’ MS Coast man died of COVID. His story changed minds and hearts.
Shelly Gray Magee thinks her younger brother, Dave, began his lifelong talent of meticulous organization and planning when he was in grade school.
“He has been a planner his whole life. Growing up he struggled in school a little bit; he had to work for every grade he got. I remember him at the kitchen table with our mom, going over and over and over things,” Gray Magee said.
“But he loved school. He loved the socialization. He was just so well-liked.”
David Gray, eleven months Shelly’s minor, later used those skills to run his D’Iberville tire shop, Gulf Coast Firestone — bookkeeping by hand even in the age of technology — to manage his grandson’s Little League as vice president of D’Iberville Youth Baseball and plan countless reunions for the St. Martin High School in Ocean Springs class of 1984, his alma mater.
Gray passed away from COVID on Sept. 14, at he age of 54, after a two month-long hospital battle. He had no underlying health conditions and was planning to get his first dose of the vaccine the week he tested positive, his daughter Katie Gray Parker said.
As an integral member and organizer on the Gulf Coast, family and friends say the D’Iberville man will be missed for his ability to lead, problem-solve and bring people together.
“He was the go-to person for everyone. He was the go-to person in the community, at his business, in his family. His siblings came to him for everything. His dad came to him for everything,” Gray Parker said. “He was everyone’s rock. He was very much in a leadership position in everything that he did.”
“So many people have told us this over the past few days, he was very much so larger than life. He was very much a presence.”
Gray’s COVID fight came at the dawn of the delta variant’s arrival in Mississippi. When he tested positive after the July 4 weekend and was admitted into Singing River Hospital in Ocean Springs on July 15, State Medical Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs was warning of the spike in post-holiday cases. The fourth wave would swell to place the state among the highest case counts in the nation, now earning Mississippi the number one spot for mortality per-capita in the country.
“This was somebody so local and so larger-than-life that COVID had affected and it just, I mean, I really think it shook people, it shook the whole community,” Gray Parker said.
“It was just — wow, if something can happen to David Gray, something can happen to anybody.”
Gray’s seven weeks on the ventilator in the Ocean Springs ICU was palpable for his family and friends as it is for many on the Coast during COVID’s fourth wave. The overwhelmed health system also saw Gray’s first cousin because of COVID — the men became next-door neighbors in the ICU.
“Michael, our first cousin, he and David were actually room to room,” Gray Magee said. “As of right now, [Michael is] on the ventilator at Memorial. He got better and was sent home, and within the week he was already having trouble breathing. And Ocean Springs had no room.”
“It has just hit our family.”
A longtime friend of the family also was being treated for COVID in the Ocean Springs ICU during Gray’s stay.
“We had another friend that was actually a friend of my dad’s there in the ICU with him that recently passed away also, and I had been in contact with his wife… we would kind of like compare notes and you know, see where they were at in their journey,” Gray Parker said.
The impact of this “larger-than-life” man’s illness has encouraged many to get vaccinated against the virus. Gray Parker said they’ve had “a lot of people” reach out to the family saying they’ve gotten their shots after hearing her father’s story.
“I cannot tell you the stories of people who have called and told us they’ve gotten vaccinated because of what happened to David,” Gray Magee said.
“A lady that I work with, she said, ‘We specifically went to get vaccinated after we heard what has happened to David.’ They didn’t think it could happen to them or touch them but it hit so close to home.”
When the time came for Gray’s own story to be meticulously documented for many interested members of the community, his daughter chronicled his COVID process on Facebook, posting updates as many as three times a day during his seven weeks on the ventilator in the ICU.
“I’m just a stay-at-home mom, and I think that allowed me the time that I was able to dedicate to [updating family and friends.] It was an absolute blessing. And it was every hour of my day for seven weeks,” Gray Parker said.
“I pretty much updated our family and friends and community members, he was such a big part of the community, that so many people were checking in on him...things changed, not just daily, things changed hour by hour in the ICU. That’s something they told us very frequently. That COVID is just a constant roller coaster, a constant up and down.”
The posts became so widespread that Gray Magee said strangers would friend her on Facebook to keep up with the family’s updates. At Gray’s funeral on Tuesday, followers came up to introduce themselves.
“Tons of people came to the funeral that I didn’t even know. I had several that shook my hand and said they had never met David, they said they had to come because they were following Katie’s updates,” Gray Magee said.
Coach’s impact on the Coast
D’Iberville didn’t play their Little League baseball season this fall, in large part because Gray was in the hospital and unable to organize the league.
“They should have had a fall season, but because he got sick and because he was such an integral part of putting each season together, they ended up not being able to get enough people to get it up and running,” Gray Parker said.
A dad and a grandpa, Gray his 12-year-old grandson a few years ago, and began coaching about six years ago with former D’Iberville Youth Baseball President Jason Kahl.
Throughout the years, Gray went from assistant coach to board member to vice president.
“It’s gonna be a whole different league, I would say, because of the impact that he had on the league and getting it up to speed and everything up and running. And just the amount of work that he’s done behind the scenes that people don’t really see,” Kahl said.
Khal said that Gray made everyone around him feel comfortable and welcome.
“If I didn’t go by his shop for a while, he would randomly text me the address, asking if I forgot where it was,” Khal laughed.
Gray lived for others, his sister said, especially his family. The week of Gray’s passing was a “little harder,” said his daughter, because her father would have celebrated his 32nd wedding anniversary with her mother on Sept. 16.
They met each other 36 years ago, and he was her high school sweetheart. The couple were also business partners — she did bookkeeping at his shop.
“It takes a very special couple to be able to live together and work together. That’s not an easy thing to do, to be with someone that often,” Gray Parker said.
Gray’s connection with his sister was especially strong too, Gray Magee said. Because they were so close in age.
“We had this saying, “I will love you from the cradle to the grave. And he did. And I said that when I spoke at his service. He loved me well. We had a really special connection.”
A long journey with COVID
The arc of Gray’s illness mimicked the fourth wave across the Coast. He first became sick with sinus symptoms after July 4 weekend — his family isn’t quite sure how he contracted it, but assumed it was in his tire shop.
“He talked to everyone who walked through that door, that’s probably where he got it from,” Gray Parker said.
He went to an urgent care a few days later with “really bad nausea.” His symptoms had worsened to dehydration and vomiting by July 13, so his family thought he needed hospital treatment.
His sister, who had been vaccinated, took him to Singing River Hospital in Ocean Springs.
It was the beginning of the delta surge on the Coast, so Gray had to wait in the packed emergency room, where he ended up fainting.
“It was traumatic for me. We got him to the back and he was just not responding to them,” Gray Magee said. “They said David didn’t meet the criteria to stay because he was breathing OK.”
The hospital sent Gray home on July 13 with nausea medication and IV fluids, recommending he get a monoclonal antibody infusion but not prescribing it, said Gray Parker. He never got the treatment.
The following day he became sicker and sicker, Gray Parker said, so Shelly took Parker back to the ER on July 15, where he fainted again in the waiting room. He was admitted that day.
“We got to the hospital and I dare to say there were twice as many people as two nights before,” Gray Magee said. “We saw some people that we knew from the shop, that were customers of his, and he was unresponsive again.”
Gray Parker said her father stayed in the hospital for several days, got some IV fluids, and was expected to be released on July 18. The hospital took one more X-ray, however, and they found pneumonia.
“Then it got progressively worse and worse to the point where he was not breathing well. They started low-flow oxygen and then they went to high-flow oxygen, and then it got to the point where he was on a BiPap (Bi-Level Positive Airway Pressure) machine,” she said.
Toward his second week in the hospital, nurses moved him into the ICU while he was still on the BiPap, because space was starting to become scarce in other departments.
“He was one of a few people in the ICU, because it was before the really bad surge,” Gray Parker said. “I would venture to say he was one of the first COVID patients Ocean Springs had in the ICU with this surge. Based on them telling us he was one of two to three patients at the time in the ICU.”
He was in the ICU for one night and two days, becoming anxious and texting his family that he didn’t feel that he needed to be there, his daughter said. The hospital moved him to a regular room for two days, and on July 23, when a blood clot formed on his leg, Gray went back to the ICU.
That was when the “beginning of the end” started, according to Gray Parker.
“When they found the blood clot in his leg, to take care of it they had to put a catheter in his leg with medication, making it impossible to prone him on his stomach,” she said, a technique used to help COVID patients breathe easier.
“When you have COVID and you have pneumonia and you’re sitting still like that for a long time, it’s just gonna build up.”
By the time he was really sick, the hospital was overwhelmed.
“That was when they did get very packed. And they, you know, they were very spread thin. I have no doubt that a lot of that played into how things played out in his care in particular.”
On the morning of July 27, the hospital called and said Gray had to be placed on a ventilator, where he stayed until he passed on Sept. 14.
This article and live event is supported by the Journalism and Public Information Fund, a fund of the Gulf Coast Community Foundation.
This story was originally published September 24, 2021 at 12:36 PM.
