American Aviation Pioneer. For 25 years (1932 to 1967) he was a leading officer of Lockheed Corporation. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and received his primary education at the Fessendon School a private boarding school for boys in West Newton, Massachusetts and his high school education at Saint George’s School, a private coeducational boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island. After graduating from Saint George’s School, he attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduating in 1927. For the next five years, he worked as a salesman for Lee Higginson & Company in Boston. He served successively as purchasing agent, assistant manager and treasurer of the Viking Flying Boat Company, a New Haven concern that manufactured a four-seat flying boat. In 1932 his brother, Robert Gross, and two partners bought the assets of Lockheed Corporation (originally founded in 1926) after the company had gone into receivership, and he became head of the company’s Eastern division, based in New York. In the late 1930’s, he directed negotiations for Britain’s purchase of 250 Hudson bombers on the eve of World War II. The $25 million order was said to be the largest single contract won by an American aircraft manufacturer up to then and would become a benchmark for mass production of planes. In the 1940’s, he became vice president and general manager of a new Lockheed subsidiary, the Vega Airplane Company, in Burbank, California, that produced the P-38 fighter and, along with Boeing and Douglas aircraft companies, the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber aircraft of World War II fame. In the late 1950s, he played a key role in developing the graceful postwar Constellation airliner and diversified Lockheed’s manufacturing as its president from 1956 to 1961. In 1961 his brother Robert died he became Lockheed’s board chairman. Under his leadership, Lockheed’s 43 plants built ships, satellites, the Polaris missile, research submarines and a 220-foot hydrofoil vessel. That same year, Lockheed reached an agreement with the Federal Government on a detailed program to counter job discrimination, which US President Kennedy hailed as a civil rights “milestone.” He retired as Chairman of the Board at Lockheed in 1967 and moved to the Philadelphia area, where he served as director of the Girard Trust Bank, the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, Smith, Kline & French Laboratories, and the Atlantic Richfield Company. He was also a longtime member of Harvard’s Board of Overseeers. On July 15, 1982 he, his wife Alexandra Van Rensselaer Devereux Gross, and their housekeeper were murdered in their home in Villanova, Pennsylvania. A drifter, Roger Peter Buehl, was apprehended, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the murders in January 1983. (bio by: William Bjornstad)  Family links:  Spouse:  Alexandra Devereux Gross (1911 – 1982)  Children:  Alexandra Devereux Gross (1941 – 1944)* *Calculated relationship