Claytie: The Roller-Coaster Life of a Texas Wildcatter

12. "I gave Modesta an unlimited budget to decorate this building, and she overspent it 43 percent."

With oil hovering around forty dollars a barrel in early 1981, Claytie formed ClayDesta Corporation, a Midland-based commercial real estate development and property management firm. The centerpiece of this enterprise would be development of a glittering $42 million, 183-acre office park north of downtown christened ClayDesta Plaza. And while he never missed a chance to tell folks that all he knew about banking was borrowing, he also formally entered the financial wars as founder of ClayDesta National Bank. Both the bank and Claytie’s company offices were located in the plaza, which also would house the offices of most of his Midland employees when it opened in late 1983. Claytie selected friend and confidante Bob Smith as executive vice president of the corporation, but his business cards reflected the special camaraderie that existed between the two diehard Aggies: they identified Smith as “Executive Sidekick” rather than executive VP. “I guess I’m the guy who puts out the fires,” Smith told a business writer shortly after his appointment. “Whenever there’s a problem , it seems like I’m the one trying to fix it.” In his early Midland days, in 1967, Claytie rented a room and desk from Smith in his of- fices. After Claytie purchased the Gulf Building in 1973, he rented office space to Smith and hired him in 1975. “Working here is an adventure ,” Smith confided to a writer. “You never know what kind of project you’ll be undertaking or where you’ll be going next. There always seems to be a challenge ahead.” I gave Modesta an unlimited budget to decorate this building, and she overspent it 43 percent.” “ 12 ClayDesta groundbreaking, 1982 172 P A R T T H R E E Claytie chose David Jones, executive vice president and head of lending for the American Bank of Waco, as president of ClayDesta National. And he installed Modesta as one of six directors. When people lavished praise on the showplace complex and what he called his “forty-dollar-oil office,” Claytie would just smile and announce that Modesta was the spirit and force behind the eclectic and exotic monument to West Texas oil. “I gave Modesta an ‘unlimited’ budget to decorate this building,” he would say solemnly, “and she overspent it 43 percent.” For Modesta, the project was almost like birthing, welcoming a new baby, and it did become a family affair. “I loved putting my heart and soul and my time into planning it with the architects, the decorators, the building contractors, and the landscapers. It took all my time, but I could bring my kids down here with me, and that was wonderful.” Claytie’s dad was confined to a wheelchair and battling cancer but that didn’t keep him away. “We brought him in here to see what was happening, and he thought it was fabulous,” Modesta said. “He was so proud of Claytie and enjoyed his success in building this huge building. So did his mother and my folks, of course.” The heartbeat of the complex was the breathtaking atrium, which featured fountains and plants and took on a special holiday glow at Christmas when decorated with hundreds of red poinsettias. Though it changed seasonally and sometimes dramatically, this is how Sandy Sheehy, in her book Texas Big Rich, described the edifice: In true Texas tradition, it boasted the vastest atrium and the tallest houseplants in the United States. Under a skylight composed of dozens of glass pyramids, speckled brown ducks splashed in an artificial stream fed by its own waterfall and waddled beneath towering rubber plants, thirty-foot ficus trees, Brobdingnagian philodendrons, and three-story Norfolk pines. At the center was a fountain spurting fifty feet into the air. In an arid, pancake-flat city where contact with nature T H E G O - G O - Y E A R S 173 often meant enduring dust storms and dodging tumbleweeds, the atrium acted like a magnet. People strolled down the flagstone paths and ate their lunches on its wooden park benches. But pleasant as it was, this indoor oasis seemed otherworldly, as if it were plunked down on some distant planet to remind deracinated interstellar colonists what Earth was like. Claytie’s private office was only minimally less striking than the atrium, although not a single “Brobdingnagian philodendron” or a “deracinated interstellar...