Kay and leo drey biography

  • Leo A. Drey, born in St. Louis on January 19, 1917 to Leo A. and Alma Drey, died peacefully at his home in University City on May 26, 2015.
  • Leo Albert Drey Jr was an American timber magnate, conservationist, and philanthropist from Missouri.
  • Born in St. Louis in 1917, Drey graduated from Antioch College in 1939, and served in the U.S. Army in World War II. In 1955 he married Kay.

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    Nature-loving philanthropist Leo A. Drey leaves a legacy of protected Ozark land

    For more than 60 years, Leo A. Drey worked to transform cut-over Ozark nation to productive, beautiful forests and woodlands, open for hiking and public enjoyment. His work also included seeking out some of Missouri’s most important landmarks ­both cultural and natural ­ and making them available for generations to come.

    Drey died peacefully May 26 at his home in St. Louis. He was 98.

    Drey began his life’s work in 1951, purchasing small parcels of Ozark timberland with a plan to restore the forest. Later, he learned of clearcutting plans for 90,000 acres owned bygd a whiskey distillery. He successfully negotiated to buy this nation, previously assembled by the Pioneer Cooperage Company.

    Pioneer Forest, as it is now named, comprises 143,000 acres in Shannon, Reynolds, Dent, Texas, Carter and Ripley counties. Over the decades, Drey and his foresters have demonstrated that Ozark oak forests can

  • kay and leo drey biography

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    Board of Directors

    Garrett R. Broshuis, Chair, is a partner at Korein Tillery in St. Louis, where he has won national awards for playing prominent roles in some of the most complex cases in the country. He was the lead attorney in a landmark case challenging the pay scheme for minor league baseball players, which settled for $185 million in what is believed to be the largest settlement for minimum wage violations in history. He also co-founded and served as president of the nonprofit Advocates for Minor Leaguers, which led to the unionization of minor league baseball players. For that work, he was honored by Jobs with Justice for its 2023 Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award. 

    He received his J.D. from Saint Louis University, where he graduated valedictorian and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Law Journal. He is also an adjunct professor of sports law at Saint Louis University Law School. Before law school, Garrett played six years in baseball’s minor

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    Leo Drey

    Leo Albert Drey Jr. (, January 19, 1917 – May 26, 2015)[1] was an American timber magnate, conservationist, and philanthropist from Missouri.

    Biography

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    Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a wealthy manufacturer of glassware, Drey was a 1935 graduate of John Burroughs School and a 1939 graduate of Antioch College.[2] In 1937, he was 20 and traveling with six other students in Shanghai when war broke out between China and Japan. Drey began acquiring timberland in the Missouri Ozarks for reforestation and conservation in 1951. His holdings, much acquired for the price of back taxes, eventually grew to nearly 160,000 acres (650 km2), the largest private landholding in the state and larger than Missouri's entire state park system. The project, known as Pioneer Forest, is a commercial forest managed in the public interest, with single-tree selection harvesting techniques, which he pioneered.[3] Drey purchased the Greer Mill propert