Death of a Salesman
Christopher Carter
I wrote a few months back about the great honor I had to meet Malcolm Pray. Mr. Pray was a self made man who loved all things automobile. He started his career after college as a car salesman and never looked back, ultimately building one of the most successful automobile franchises in the world. Mr. Pray passed away a few weeks ago from complications from a stroke. This was just a week or so after having open-heart surgery to fix a heart valve issue. And, as the story goes, he put off this surgery two days before it was to occur after learning Governor Rick Scott of Florida was in town and he wanted to throw a dinner party for him. His wife acquiesced and the dinner party was on. The heart surgery could wait.
My wife and I just stared at each other upon hearing the news as we had just recently had the privilege of spending some time with Mr. Pray at his Pray Achievement Center. He was engaging and kind to us, approaching us as we were studying an enormous family tree that was a mural on one wall of the Center, showing his family's lineage back to the Mayflower. He proceeded to take us to his private office where he discussed the many artifacts he saved from his lifetime, including back to his childhood days. Little did we know at the time Mr. Pray suffered from dyslexia so the extremely detailed binders and organization of his collections make all the sense in the world now.
Mr. Pray was a salesman. Whether it was running his auto empire or working with one of the civic organizations in the community or any of his charitable endeavors or talking to the 7000+ underprivileged children who visited the Pray Achievement Center to hear Mr. Pray encourage them to be all they could be. Only in his business life was he selling objects. The rest of the time he was selling causes. Whether it was raising money for the United Way or Red Cross or the Boy Scouts, or working on campaigns for Republicans at both the Federal, state and town level, Mr. Pray was selling a cause. To the kids who visited the Pray Achievement Center he was selling a belief in themselves, that if they worked hard and were honest they could achieve everything that he had.
As Mr. Pray was known to say, "learn to sell yourself, because no matter what you do in life, you will always be in the people business".
I suspect Mr. Pray is is still selling in the afterlife.
The following link will take you to an interview with Mr. Pray at his Achievement Center and will show some of the many classic automobiles in his collection.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRRm8wKVtZc
