James Anthony Clark (1908-1978), author, columnist, and public-relations consultant and historian of the oil industry, was born in Abita Springs, LA, and grew up in Beaumont, TX. He attended South Park Junior College (Lamar University) and worked for Magnolia Petroleum Company, the Galveston News, and the Beaumont Journal . In 1935 he was appointed statehouse correspondent in Austin, and from 1941 to 1946 he served as intelligence officer in Puerto Rico, the Pacific and Japan. He left the army as a lieutenant colonel and became public relations manager for the Shamrock Hotel in Houston. He established the James A. Clark Company, a public-relations consulting firm, after the publication of his first book, Spindletop, co-authored with Michel T. Halbouty. He was well known for his Houston Post column, ”Tales of the Oil Country,” and published Three Stars for the Colonel: The Biography of Ernest O. Thompson, The Tactful Texan: A Biography of Governor Will Hobby, among others. He was married to Estelle Walton in 1934; in 1969 he established the Energy Research and Education Foundation in Houston; he died in 1978 in Houston.
Excerpted from The New Handbook of Texas, 1996.
From the guide to the James A. Clark Papers MS 277., 1889-1974, (Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University, Houston, TX)
