Biography for

Pat (Yarian) Gray

It was written in the 1961 yearbook that Pat would become a dance instructor in Cairo, Egypt. She did become a dance instructor, but in Cleveland, Ohio, instead! In 1962 she threatened her mom that she was going to run away and stay with her cousin in Florida, so her mom helped her drive there in order to be sure she was safe. While in Florida she was reborn into the Christian belief. There she married a Seminole Indian whom she met at church. They moved back to Broadview Hts. where she had her first child. Not long after, she became a widow. Then in 1966 she remarried and two years later gave birth to her second child. By 1970 she was single again, working as a bar maid, and taking business and accounting classes. By the mid-1970's she was helping her dad in his accounting firm.

All the time she was growing up, Pat enjoyed working on her car and liked driving anything that had a motor and wheels. She dreamed of being a truck driver and seeing the country she loved. When her dad passed away in 1980, she became involved in the trucking industry, a life's job that would last for 30 years. Her first job was for a previous accounting client. Next she drove for a small company based in Indianapolis, Indiana, driving from the midwest to California and back, pulling a refrigerated trailer. For three years after that she drove from coast to coast for a large company. In 1989-1990 she was slowed down a bit by breast cancer, but after a couple of months she was back at the company, working in the safety department. She became a C.D.L. examiner then for a truck driving training school where she was an instructor and examiner for three years. By that time she had been living in Indianapolis for ten years and decided it was time to get back on the road--back to what she loved.

She went back to driving for Frito-Lay, but was hurt and had surgery and physical therapy. Because she was labeled as disabled and couldn't go back to that company, she bought her own truck and leased on to a company based in Iowa. Until 1999 she continued to run coast to coast, but that winter she sold her truck and bought a small motor home which she drove to the Navajo reservation. There she worked for Chief Yellow Horse whom she helped run the trading post and took care of a small herd of buffalo and a few other animals. However, because that wasn't enough for her, she took a job at a truck stop on the Arizona-New Mexico border where she got the itch to drive again. When they discovered that she had HAZMAT on her C.D.L. license, they gave her fuel trucks to drive, much to her dismay. Not happy with that, she moved to Arizona where she tried to open a trading post in a small town in the desert; when that didn't work out, she got a job in Needles, California, driving R.R. crews back and forth to trains or depots. She continued this job for three years until she joined a company that ran trucks from the midwest to California again.

Now at age 68 she has gotten off the truck and is living in Golden Shores, Arizona, looking for a new adventure.