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When Lauren Grayson, who headed the city’s Public Service Department for nearly 20 years, retired in July 1970, the City Council passed a resolution that the Glendale Steam Plant on San Fernando Road be named the L.W. Grayson Steam-Electric Generating Station.

Grayson’s tenure began in April 1951 when the city’s electrical demand was 40,000 kilowatts. Demand increased sharply in the following years, and when he retired, the city had a 140,000-kilowatt demand, according to the Ledger Independent, July 1970. To acknowledge his firm leadership during these growth years, the council named the power plant for him.

Grayson began his professional career in Riverside. After graduating from Riverside Polytechnic High in 1925, he went to work in the city’s utilities department and studied for one year at Riverside Junior College. By 1942, Grayson was superintendent of public utilities for the city.

The city’s water needs were very urgent at that time, said his son, David Grayson, of Glendale.

The elder Grayson often relied on a divining rod, a forked branch from a willow tree, to search for a place to dig the next well. In 1947, the year he graduated from his father’s old school, David Grayson watched as the Riverside crew dug a well on the spot his father had indicated.

“He’s the one who decided where to drill for water,” said David Grayson, as he displayed a Riverside Daily Press from that time.

The headline read “Newest Artisan Well Produces Record Flow.”

Despite the fact that he had no engineering degree, Lauren Grayson worked his way to the top. He was appointed Riverside’s chief engineer and general manager in 1950.

The next year, he assumed the same position in Glendale, in the post left vacant by the 1949 death of Peter Diederich, who headed the Glendale utility for many years.

Lauren Grayson and Diederich were business associates and friends. A February 1951 Glendale News-Press article announcing Lauren Grayson’s appointment, said Diederich had expressed the wish that Lauren Grayson work in Glendale. “Both were self-taught,” continued the article, “making up in a wealth of practical experience what they lacked in formal training.”

He began his Glendale job during in challenging times, Lauren Grayson told the Los Angeles Times in July 1970.