Wheelchair basketball was first introduced at the Birmingham Veterans Administration hospital in Van Nuys, California. Assistant Athletic Director Robert Rynearson helped to devise the first set of rules for the sport in 1946 to provide recreation and rehabilitation for paralyzed World War Two veterans.

In early 1947, Dr. Gerald Gray, a reconstructive surgeon at the Corona Naval Hospital in nearby Norco, California, visited colleagues at the Birmingham VA hospital and saw patients playing the new wheelchair basketball game. After conferring with Rynearson, Dr. Gray introduced wheelchair basketball at the Corona Naval Hospital and organized a team, who dubbed themselves the “Rolling Devils.”

In February 1947, the wheelchair basketball team from the Birmingham VA traveled to Corona to play the Rolling Devils, and the visiting team won one of the first recorded wheelchair basketball games in American history. After this loss, the Rolling Devils went undefeated for the rest of 1947. Most of games played by the Rolling Devils were against teams composed of non-disabled players who had to quickly adapt to playing basketball while in wheelchairs.

In the spring of 1947, the Rolling Devils traveled twice to Northern California, where they beat the varsity basketball teams from St. Mary’s College and the University of California. In May, the Oakland Tribune sponsored a game between the Devils and the semi-pro Oakland Bittners, a top AAU team led by former Stanford star and future Minneapolis Laker Jim Pollard. After a trip to Sacramento in mid-June, the Rolling Devils abruptly disbanded. As the United States military began discharging and transferring patients out of the Corona Naval Hospital, players on the team went their separate ways.

The success of the Rolling Devils garnered significant press coverage and public attention that helped popularize the sport of wheelchair basketball and educate the public about expanded athletic opportunities for people with disabilities.

Dr. Gerald Harry Gray compiled the scrapbook and related materials while he was working at the Corona Naval Hospital and helping to coach the Rolling Devils. Dr. Gray attended the University of California and Harvard Medical School. During World War Two, Lieutenant Commander Gray worked as a reconstructive surgeon at Corona Naval Hospital. After the war, he continued to work as a plastic surgeon in California, serving as the President of the California Society of Plastic Surgeons. Dr. Gray died in 1982.