The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 61, No. 31, Ed. 1 Sunday, December 5, 1982 Page: 6 of 65
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6-A
THE BAYTOWN SUN
Sunday, December 5, 1982
.
Priceless Works Displayed
Small Texas Town Boasts Art Collection
SNYDER (AP) - Nona Bunch
has a secret: this small, oil-rich
Texas town has a private
museum housing priceless N.C.
Wyeth paintings that colored the
books of many children’s classics,
and an exquisite ivory elephant
____tusk'she says was carved by so-
meone using “little steak
Mves.”
Ms. Bunch is a tour guide for
the few that venture into Snyder’s
Diamond M Museum, which art
observers say has as fine a
private art collection as any bet-
ween the Amon Carter Museum in
Fort Worth and the Henry E. Hun-
tington collection in Los Angeles.
Fifteen original N.C. Wyeth
paintings, including drawings
that bedecked James Eenimore
Cooper’s “The Last of the
Mohicans” and Jules Verne’s
“Mysterious Island,” are found in
the two-story museum.
Also housed in the in-
conspicuously marked building
along Snyder’s main street is a
* hollowed-out, 5-foot-long ivory
tusk laced with figurines that was
carved by three generations of a
Chinese family.
Business Mixed
But few of the local residents
who make Scurry County, on the
edge of the Permian Basin, the
highest oil-producing county in
the natioftvand Snyder one of the
richest towns per capita in Texas
even know the museum exists.
richest private collections of art
west of the Mississippi.
“His Wyeths are priceless.
We’ve been told there is no finer
private art collection between
Fort Worth and the West Coast,”
ting was never publicly
displayed.
But Mr. Mac was upset with his
own portrait because “he didn’t
like the tucks that showed around
his neck, ” Ms. Bunch said.
One carving depicts a light
green bok-choy stalk with a
cricket ready to prey upon two un-
suspecting ladybugs.
The ivory used in the bok-choy
stalk and other museum exhibits
“Hardly anybody knows we’re
here,” said Ms. Bunch, who occa-
sionally conducts tours for local
schoolchildren and art afi-
cionados who have discovered the
museum. She is also' a family
friend „of. the . Diamond M
Museum’s founder, C.T. “Mr.
Mac” McLaughlin.
McLaughlin, an entrepenuer
and pen-pal of the late President
Lyndon Johnson, first came to
Texas from Pennsylvania in the
1920s with less than $100 in his
pocket, according to his daughter,
Evelyn Davies.
“Daddy came to Texas as arik
adventurer, to seek his fortune,”
she said.
. Wlien McLaughlin died in 1974,
the multimillionaire owned an oil
drilling company, about 5,000
acres of petroleum-blessed
Scurry County land and one of the
says Mrs, Davies, whenewitves
on her father’s Diamond M
Ranch.
The collection contains about
300 pieces, so many that dozens of
paintings and rare Currier & Ives
lithographs are locked in a closet,
said Ms. Bunch.,
“We just have only so much
space,” she said.
Others are put in the back room
for another reason: two portraits
of Mr. Mac did not please him or
his family, including one commis-
sioned by celebrated
Southwestern artist Peter Hurd,
When the Hurd portrait of Mr.
Mac was unveiled, McLaughlin
was so upset “he hung it in the
bathroom to show what he
thought of it,” said Mrs. Davies.
LBJ, Mr. Mac’s friend from the
late 1940s, also disliked a Hurd
presidential portrait he thought
cast him in a poor light. The pain-
The pieces placed about the
dimly lit museum show off the
splendor of the Diamond M collec-
tion: 150-year-old Dresden china
pieces made in one-of-a-kind
molds in West Germany fill part
of one room. W.H.D. Koemer’s
cleanly lined paintings of Indians
and rogues of the Wild West fill
another room.
The Koemer paintings that dot-
ted covers of the Saturday Even-
ing Post and C.W. Post ads during
the 1920s became models for
many of Norman Rockwell’s
paintings, art observers say.
In another of the half-dozen
museum rooms, bronze
sculptures by Frederic Rem-
ington and pieces of the Helena,
Rubenstein jade collection can be
found in odd nooks and crannies.
Another darkened room has
delicate pieces of carved Jvory in
glass cases.
was often buried up to 30 years in
the earth by the carvers to give it
a tea-stained color. Then the
ivory was hand-painted in a style
that has disappeared in the last
half-century, said Ms. Bunch.
The prize of the collection,
though, is the immense ivory tusk
that is pierced through and
through with a spiral of hand-
carved figurines that start at the
base and end five feet away at the
tip.
Quarter-inch figures of Chinese
farmers and horsemen near a
pagoda or wall ring around the
hollowed-out tusk. The work is so
finely chiseled, Ms. Bunch says
every time she studies it, she sees
anew carved detail emerge.
The tusk reportedly was carved
by three generations, and depicts
about 400 years of a Chinese fami-
ly’s life and livelihoods, said Mrs.
Davies.
“We’re told it teUs jhe life
history anil what the family ac-
complished in their lifetime,”
said Ms. Bunch. “Ifalso looks like
it was carved with little steak
knives.”
But Wyeth’s works are pro-
bably the most renowned of any jn
the museum.
Wyeth, who died in 1945, has i5
works in the Diamond M, in-
cluding paintings from Verne’s
“Mysterious Island,” Cooper’s
“Mohicans,” Mark Twain’s “Thp
Mysterious Stranger” and Robert
Louis Stevenson’s “Kidnapped”
and “Treasure Island.”
Wyeth’s son, Andrew, now one
t of America’s most famous artists,
also has one painting — ’‘The
Winter Apples” — in the collec-
tion.
The Diamond M, operated by
the Diamond M Foundation since
it opened in 1964 and co-managed
by Texas Western College, -in
Snider, also is the apple of Ms.
Bunch’s eye.
“Who would have thought a city
like Snyder would have
something like this?” she asks.
“For a town of -13,000, it’s
unbelievable.”
Hotel Offers Plane Tie-Downs
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS member of two anti- growing every year.
Foiks in the que airplane groups TheStelnnah fly-
southwest Louisiana which hold annual in included 29
18-wheeler van.”
Murphey said he
got the idea of a ramp
town of Jennings are fly-ins at the hotel, registered planes this to the Ifbtel when he
no longer surprised said members carry year. There are only bought the land from
when the Holiday Inn 100 pounds of gear on six tie-downs at the... the airport <about a
parking lot is filled their planes — hotel, but the others half-mile away,
with World War II ‘‘heads e t s ,' screw their own tie- “Since we were
airplanes or even the parachutes, flying downs into the near- right oji it, we
Goodyear blimp. suits, maintenance by grass. thought it’d be a good
“I always look at it equipment, tools, oil,
when I go by to see if engine parts — things
there’re any planes you carry around to
there,” said Afton keep your plane mov-
Hylton of neighboring ing around.
Roanoke. “You get in “In other fly-ins,
the habit.
It’s the nation’s on-
ly hotel with ajrplane
tie-downs, according
tor Donna Burnette,
assistant to manager
Michael States
“We do hold the
The blimp is an idea to see if we could
even more frequent have planes come
visitor, touching in,”hesaid.
down at the hotel So a-taxi strip was
several times each built to the runway i
year, said Ms. Duke said the anti-
we have to call what Burnette. que planes don’t use
we—c^-a—support’ ** ‘They just put it in the airport — they fly
vehicle, a Van or the grass, right onto the grass tax-
something. You put behind the hotel,’’ she iway about 1,000
all your equipment said. “It’s too big yards from the 8-
motel, take it out strip.” taxi to a parking spot,
again, put it in your “That’s always, “We get a lot of dl
bag on that one,” she room, and trip over it from our standpoint, companies come in
said- , on the floor an the good business; inmi- with .tjieir corporate
The tie-downs, on time. ■ dition to the publici- planes,” Murphey
an extension from a “We leave it right ty,” said Phillip T. said. “we have some
nearby airport, allow under the wing at
pilots to taxi to about Jennings. Because
200 feet from the 198- it’s right there.
room hotel. It is an
attraction for fliers of
all types — oil ex-
ecutives in corporate
planes, weekend
rigr
Nobody’s going to
bother it.”
Duke, a member of
the Confederate Air
Force’s Cajun Wing
Pilots, helicopter andnf.the-Loui8ianft~
fliers and especially branch of the Stear- many people are in- “Our business is a
people in antique man Restorers volved — 40or50 — to mixture of tourists
planes. Association, said tie the thing down. It and the commercial
Willard Duke, a both local fly-ins are also travels with an business.”
r -vV. :
LEATHUS COOPER
Cooper Is
Nex Exxon
Annuitant
Leathus Cooper has
retired from Exxon
Research and
Engineering Co. as a
supervisor ltl
4 research services
after 36 years of com-
pany service.
Cooper and wife,
Wilma, have two
daughters, Sandra
and Shauer, and two
granddaughters,
Kristen and Jillian.
Leathus plans to
spend more time ran-
ching, fishing and
hunting during retire-
ment. a
People Helping
People
The United Way
COME HEAR
—^rHtrttorr
DISCUSS
IRA's And
CD ALTERNi
E.F. Hutton invites you to cr special Seminar on In-
dividual Retirement Accounts and CD Alternatives
C.D.'s At this seminar, we will discuss eligibility re-
quirements for 1983, Before it's too late come hear
what EF HUTTON has to say
WHEN:Tluirsday, December 9th 7:00 PM
WHERE:Sterling Municipal Library
For Reservations Call 1-800-392-2417
IPHutton & Co., Inc.
1234 Bay Area Blvd.
Houston, Texas 77058
* '. '
When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen
Murphey, president helicopters that come
of the, investment jn. y/e get a iot of
company that owns weekend fliers.”
the hotel. All told, though,
“They have a bus people who fly into
that travels with that the airport probably
thing, and I guess account for less than
they take about 40 10 percent of the
Member SIPC
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■ '•'••■-s.-.-.- ••• "
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Brown, Leon. The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 61, No. 31, Ed. 1 Sunday, December 5, 1982, newspaper, December 5, 1982; Baytown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1075072/m1/6/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Sterling Municipal Library.