Ray Stanton Avery

THE GROTON AVERY CLAN, Vol. II, by Elroy McKendree Avery and Catherine Hitchcock (Tilden) Avery, Cleveland, 1912. p. 1075

Founder of Avery International Adhesives Co. & Avery Dennison Co.

In the 1920 U.S. Census, Stanton Avery was 12 years old, one of three children in the household of Oliver P. and Emma D. Avery in Portland (Multnomah County), OR. Oliver Avery (48, b CT) was a minister.

When the 1930 U.S. Census was taken, Ray S. Avery was 23, one of three children in the household of his parents Oliver P. and Eunice R. Avery in Billings, Yellowstone County, MT. Ray's father Oliver Avery was an Asst. Supt. of the Congregational Conference. Ray's older brother,Perry was a college teacher. Ray and his sister Martha J. Avery (13) attended school in 1930. Ray and his brother Perry were recorded as absent in this census; they were probably attending school or working away from home.

Ray Stanton Avery married Margaret Lohlker in about 1932. (Margaret Lohlker, 20, b CA of parents b CA, appeared in the 1930 U.S. Census for Pasadena, Los Angeles County, CA [ED1236, p. 1A], as a teacher and nurse for a private family, a boarder in the household of Paul and Almelia Hart.)

On 7 Aug 1935, Ray Avery married Dorothy Louise Durfee. Just before their marriage, Ray and Dorothy (with the help of friends) started the Kum-Kleen Adhesive Products Company in Los Angeles. That company eventually developed into the Avery Dennison Corporation, a worldwide manufacturer of self-adhesive materials. In 1960, Ray and Dorothy established the Durfee Foundation, a foundation which in the next forty years awarded grants worth more than 20 million dollars for the promotion of art and culture, education, history and community development in the Los Angeles, CA, area.

R. Stanton Avery was an inventor, an entrepreneur and philanthropist. He registered 18 patents iincluding automatic label dispensers, in-line label printing machines and the self-adhesive postage stamp. He served on the Boards of Trustees for Claremont Graduate School and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and as governor of the Los Angeles Counry Music Center. From 1971-1985, he served as chairman of the Board of Trustees for the California Institue of Technology; from 1972-1991 he was also chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Huntington Library.

Avery received a number of awards and honorary degrees: California Manufacturer of the Year (1970); Business Man of the Year (1974), Doctorate of Humane Letters, Pitzer College (1977); Honorary Doctor of Laws, Pomona College (1968); Honorary Doctor of Laws, Claremont Graduate School (1971); Honorary Doctor of Laws, Occidental College (1985).

Shortly before his death in 1997, R. Stanton Avery donated 1.5 million dollars to the New England Historical and Genealogical Society for library renovations and the preservation of the Society's books and manuscripts. (His daughter, Judith, had served an internship at NEHGS as part of her graduate studies program in historic resources management and had become a trustee of the Society in 1994.) A year after Avery's death the NEHGS Manuscripts Department was renamed the R. Stanton Avery Collection. The R. Stanton Avery Foundation gave the Society's Endowment Fund a gift of 2 million dollars in 2001 to support the Collection and the Research Library.