Haverhill, NH- Arthur Gray, Jr., the distinguished Wall Street veteran who as a brash young investment manager not long removed from his own wartime exploits in 1951 helped organize a grassroots rally for Dwight Eisenhower in Madison Square Garden that was instrumental in convincing the general to enter the presidential race, died Monday in New Hampshire. He was 86. Following successful double knee replacement, he died in the hours that followed, said Betty Johnson-Gray, his wife. Mr. Gray, a highly decorated Army Air Force navigator in the European theater, had joined with Charles Willis and Stan Rumbough, former Navy and Marine pilots, to form Citizens for Eisenhower, even before, as Mr. Gray frequently said, they knew whether Eisenhower was a Republican or a Democrat. We all just believed that he would make a great president. The trio snared the help of popular radio performers Tex and Jinx McCrary and other stars and did what the political establishment of the day said couldn t be done: Filled the old Madison Square Garden to the rafters for a political rally that couldn t start until the fights ended at 10:30 pm. The kinescope footage of the crowd shouting, We like Ike! was raced across the Atlantic the next day and Eisenhower credits it, in his autobiography, as one of three key factors in his decision to run. Mr. Gray continued working for the Eisenhower campaign as an advance man, and with C. Langhorne Washburn, is credited in William Safire s The New Language of Politics with contributing as well to the political lexicon by conceiving of the Eisenhower-Nixon Bandwagon of 1952. These were a trio of 25-ton trailer trucks, each with a three-man crew, which advanced Eisenhower appearances throughout the campaign. Each brightly decorated truck was outfitted with a jeep, powerful searchlights, campaign balloons, dresses and other paraphernalia designed to create a stir wherever it rolled. On Wall Street, Mr. Gray s career spanned 64 years. Freshly discharged from the army in late 1945 and having had his fill of aviation, he had asked John M. Schiff, then head of Kuhn Loeb, for a job and started counting securities in the cage for $30 a week a drastic cut from the $120 a week flight pay he had been drawing. But Arthur Gray found his m tier in Wall Street: It s not work. It s fun. The wonderful thing about Wall Street is that it s so broadening. If you re in the steel or the chemical business, you specialize more and more in that, but in the investment management business, everything that goes on in the world is grist for your mill. I can t wait to see what s going on in the world. That s what keeps you going. A new challenge every day. Except for a short sojourn in the movie business in the mid-1950s, Mr. Gray worked in investment management for the remainder of his life. From 1957 to 1959, he was EVP and Director of A.M Kidder Co., Inc., before founding his own New York Stock Exchange member firm, Gray & Co., in 1959, and continuing to actively manage its affairs there until 1974 when he merged with Mitchell Hutchins & Co. Subsequently Mr. Gray continued to manage his clients affairs through affiliations with Tallasi Management Co, Dreman Gray & Embry, Dreyfus Personal Management, Cowen Asset Management and lastly Carret Asset Management, LLC retiring December, 2008. Mr. Gray was either a Director or Trustee of the following: American Arbitration Association; American Museum of Natural History; Boys Athletic League, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church; International Center for the Disabled; The Lerner Gray Foundation; The Smithsonian Natural History Museum; The Woodlawn Cemetery; Seventh Generation, Inc. and Genelabs Technologies, Inc. Mr. Gray was born on Dec. 21, 1922, in New York City. He graduated from the Lawrenceville School in 1940, and studied aeronautical engineering at M.I.T. from 1940 to 1942 before enlisting. While serving with the U.S. 8th Air Force from 1942- 45 he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters, four European Battle Stars and a Presidential Unit Citation. During the war, he married Adele Hall. They divorced in 1953. Mr. Gray is survived by their four children: Michael Gray, Santa Barbara, CA, Kathleen Gray, Los Angeles, CA, John Gray, Stockton, CA, and Wendy Gray, Washington, DC. In 1964, Mr. Gray married Betty Johnson-Gray, of North Carolina, now residing in Haverhill, NH. He is survived, in addition, by their two daughters, Lydia Gray Bartholow, Haverhill, NH, and Elisabeth Gray Gonzalez, Madrid, Spain, a step-son, H. Richard Arthur Redding, Charlottesville, VA, fourteen grandchildren. A memorial service will be on Monday, December 21, 2009, at 2 PM at the First Congregational Church of Haverhill UCC, 120 School St, Haverhill, NH, with Rev. Dr. Kenneth Johnson, Mr. Gray s brother-in-law, and Rev. David Pendleton, pastor of the church officiating. At the family s request, memorial contributions may be made to Speare Memorial Hospital, 16 Hospital Road, Plymouth, NH 03264 or Cottage Hospital, P.O. Box 2001, Woodsville, NH 03785.