Ships
- USS Houston (CA-30) Captain from 17 June 1930
J. B. Gay, Jesse Bishop Gay, was born in Kankakee, Illinois, on 6 March 1881. He entered the United States Naval Academy on 9 September 1897 and graduated with the class of 1901. He spent his career in the surface navy and rose to captain.
In December 1914, as a lieutenant commander, he took command of the destroyer Benham, and he was still her captain at the beginning of 1916. During the First World War he also commanded the destroyer Conyngham, from 8 November 1917 to 15 February 1918, while she worked from Queenstown, Ireland. On 22 November 1917, with Gay in command, Conyngham rescued thirty survivors of the British steamer Hartland. For his command of Benham and Conyngham on patrol and convoy duty in waters threatened by submarines and mines, he received the Navy Cross. The citation credited him with escorting troops and supplies and with pressing both offensive and defensive action against enemy naval forces.
On 17 June 1930, at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Gay commissioned the new cruiser Houston. Newport News Shipbuilding had launched her on 7 September 1929, and she entered service as the light cruiser CL-30, a Northampton-class ship armed with nine 8-inch guns. Gay was her first commanding officer. After fitting out she called at New York and Gardiner’s Bay, then sailed from Newport on 30 August 1930 for a shakedown in northern Europe. She visited Southampton, Rotterdam, and Le Havre, returned by way of Key West, and from 23 to 29 October lay at Houston, Texas, the city for which she was named. On 5 November she arrived at Hampton Roads and joined the Scouting Fleet.
Captain Robert A. Dawes relieved Gay on 18 November 1930. Those five months covered commissioning, the European cruise, and the call at her namesake city. On 1 July 1931, under a later captain, Houston was reclassified as the heavy cruiser CA-30. She afterward served as flagship on the Asiatic Station and, still later, as a fleet cruiser in the Pacific. Jesse Barrett Oldendorf commanded her from 16 October 1939 to 30 August 1941. Captain Albert H. Rooks had her when the Pacific war opened, and she was lost in the Battle of the Sunda Strait on the night of 28 February–1 March 1942.
Around January 1934 Gay was chief of staff to Rear Admiral Henry H. Hough, commandant of the Boston Navy Yard and of the First Naval District. He retired on 30 June 1936. He died in San Diego County, California, on 4 July 1966, at the age of eighty-five, and was buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.