We all want to leave something behind when we go. The architectural historian Christopher Gray, who died this month, at the age of sixty-six, left a richer legacy than most. There is the Office of Metropolitan History, the business he founded, which is dedicated to digging up blueprints for old New York City buildings. And there’s the nearly thirty years’ worth of “Streetscape” columns he wrote for the Times, which chronicled the city’s unheralded architectural treasures.
But Gray had one more bequest. Just before he died, suddenly, from complications from pneumonia, his lawyer alerted his family to an e-mail he’d sent to his alma mater, St. Paul’s School, in Concord, New Hampshire: “It is my wish, when I die, that my skeleton be flensed (don’t ask!) and articulated and given to a worthy institution not entirely embarrassed by its connection with me, for display in the science lab.” To sweeten the deal, Gray made a financial pledge to the school, effective “only if you accept and take delivery of my skeleton . . . and agree to leave it on display for . . . 10 years? Or until it gets stolen by the Sixth Form”—the senior class—“whichever comes first.” The school had agreed.
The request took Gray’s wife, Erin, by surprise. “This was a relatively new thought of his,” she said. Nevertheless, the family wanted to honor his wish. Which left them with an awkward question, in their grief: How do you turn a loved one into a skeleton?
Gray’s son Peter took the lead. (“We’re nature people. We’re science people,” he said of his family. “We rejected the cultural associations of skeletons and bones with death as petty.”) He called the outfit his father had suggested: Skulls Unlimited International, Inc., in Oklahoma City, which provides skull-cleaning services, mostly to hunters. Skulls Unlimited turned him down. An employee there, Terrisha Harris, explained, “We actually do clean human remains,” but only for medical institutions. “Otherwise, you’d have people putting Nana on the couch in the living room.” Peter Gray got a similar response from various “body farms,” outdoor research facilities where forensic anthropologists study decomposition. Sam Houston State University, in Texas, accepts bodies for donation, but will not return the bones. The forensic-anthropology center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has a similar policy, although it will occasionally “skeletonize” remains for institutions with which it has a relationship, like the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Peter called the Smithsonian. The museum’s collection includes thirty thousand human skeletons, most of them recovered from archeological sites. It has a small number of modern skeletons as well. “They’re our reference library,” Dr. David Hunt, the collection’s manager, said. Students use them to study things like how fractures heal and joint articulation. He said that they can learn more from real skeletons, with their quirks and variations, than from replicas made by companies such as Bone Clones, Inc. Many of the donors were friends of the museum, among them Grover Krantz, an anthropologist, who died in 2002. “He told me, ‘I’ve been a teacher all my life, so I might as well continue,’ ” Hunt recalled. Krantz’s skeleton was displayed in a 2009 exhibit, “Written in Bone,” along with that of his beloved Irish wolfhound, Clyde.
Hunt and Peter Gray came up with a plan. The family will donate Christopher’s remains to the Smithsonian, which will loan them to St. Paul’s on a long-term basis. First, though, the body will decompose at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Lee Jantz, at the school’s forensic-anthropology center, confirmed, “Mr. Gray arrived last week,” in the cargo hold of a Delta flight. “It takes about eighteen months to get a good clean skeleton,” she said. In that time, his remains will be used to train students in forensics. The bones will then be scrubbed with toothbrushes, by grad students, and transferred to the Smithsonian, where they will be rearticulated by Paul Rhymer, a taxidermist for the museum. (Gray’s estate will pay Rhymer’s fee of around five thousand dollars.) When that’s finished, Peter will pick up his father’s skeleton and take it on a “road trip,” up to St. Paul’s.
Last week, the school’s biology teacher, Theresa Gerardo-Gettens, said that she was thrilled about Gray’s gift. St. Paul’s happens to already have a real skeleton, of unknown origins—she thinks it dates to the nineteen-thirties or forties. “When I bring out that skeleton, there is a pause,” she said. “I say to the kids, ‘This is a real person who had a real life. In those bones is this person’s story.’ It leads us to all kinds of wonderful discussions. They start to talk about facing their own mortality.”
Gerardo-Gettens doesn’t know much about Gray, but, she said, “I’m hoping I can learn more about this alum. I want to hear his story, so I can share it with the students. It really makes the science come alive. We’re all curious.” ♦