Glenn T. Lang Jr.'s Obituary
Glenn Thomas Lang, Jr. December 19, 1924 – March 23, 2015 On March 23, 2015, Glenn Thomas Lang, Jr. was carried into the loving arms of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ and reunited with his loving wife of 71 years, Marguerite Evelyn Lang, who preceded him in death. He is succeeded by his son, Reginald (Reggie) Alan Lang, of Houston, his daughter, Kimberly (Kim) Ann Mitchell of Dallas, and by 4 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and 1 great-great grandchild. A graveside service will be held on Tuesday, March 31st, 2015, 1:30 p.m., at Restland Memorial Park, Dallas, Texas in the Court of Faith burial grounds. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Reggie’s favorite charity, www.mission-comfort.org, and Kim’s favorite charity, American Cancer Society or Paws for the City (Dallas). The Following is from a document that our Dad wrote and finished just prior to his death. Glenn T. Lang Jr. 90 YEARS OF MY LIFE (in Dallas, Texas) The 90 years of my life is not just about me but the life I have shared with Marguerite Lang, my wife, my lover, best friend and partner in our lives. Our life started as seniors in high school and lasted for our marriage of 68 years. After a long fight with breast and lung cancer, Marguerite passed away Dec. 14, 2009. I will miss her every day of my life. MY PARENTS The Lang’s family came from Germany, left the port of Bremerhaven, 12 November 1872, as settlers in south Texas, and settled in New Ulm, Texas. My German grandparents spelled their last name as “Lange”. As young boys going to school during World War I, my father and his brother did not want the kids in their school to know they were German. So, they dropped the “e”. My father and his brother all have birth certificates using the “e” on Lange. My father, Glenn Lang, Sr. was born December 18th 1900, in Industry, Texas, and my mother Margaret Moody was born May 24th 1906, in Dallas, Texas. I was born December 19th, 1924, my wife Marguerite Lang was born June 14th, 1925 in Kemp, Texas. GROWING UP DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION In 1933, the U.S. was in the Great Depression, only a few people had money, most people were without jobs. We were fortunate that my grandfather had a small café at Fair Park, on Exposition Avenue, across the street from the old Trails-Ways bus station. I shall never forget the line-up every day of people, two blocks long on Exposition Avenue to get food from the government, together with the soup kitchens set up by the government. My father made a dollar an hour while working for Pollock Paper and Box Company. My mother worked for my grandfather at the little café, she walked over ten miles a day, back and forth, from our little east Dallas house to save six cents that it would cost to ride the street car. The little house that our grandfather built for us cost $15 hundred dollars. In 1934, at the age of 9, I got me a job in the commercial area of Fair Park as a paper carrier for the old Dispatch News Paper Company. I got up at 6 o’clock in the morning to throw my papers. I made about three dollars a week delivering papers. I was glad to make enough money for a few things I wanted. In 1942, while in high school, I got a job as an usher at night at the old Forest Ave. theatre, which is still there. I was paid 10 cents an hour, later I got the job of putting up the marquee after closing time. I worked on a high ladder no matter the weather. I was paid an extra $1.25 cents a week. I was glad to have a job. MY SCHOOL YEARS I attended grade school in east Dallas at OM Roberts School. At the age of six, we moved to an area near Fair Park. I then attended John Henry Brown Grade School. After grade school, I attended Forest Ave High school, now Martin Luther King. At my age of nine (9), this was the two-year crime spree of Bonnie and Clyde, the out laws of the time. Their bloody deaths was on May 23, 1934. I entered the ROTC in high school. We wore military clothes and practiced military drills, even practiced rifle shooting. The ROTC was probably the best thing that happened to me and it helped me when I was inducted into the US Army. I shall never forget as I was sitting in study hall on Dec. 7, 1941 that the principal came on and said the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I graduated from high school June 04, 1943. I was a cheerleader and voted “most popular senior boy”. Eighteen (18) days later, on 22 June 1943, I was inducted into the Army. I was then 18 years old. My personal words: At this period of time, most Jewish people lived in south Dallas, along Forest Ave, Park Row and South Blvd. Most of my friends I grew up with in grade school and high school were Jewish. I was so close to the Jewish kids that I would put on my Yarmulke and attended shoal (school) with them. I give here a few of their names of my friends, Herbert Goldberg (jewelry), Joe Freed (Freed furniture), Woozy Glazier (liquor) and my dear friend Leon Rubenstein. I could name a hundreds more. MY INDUCTION AND DESTINATION NUMBER 1 Seven (7) days from high school, I was drafted for WWII. I left Dallas and was sent to Camp Walters for further assignment near Mineral Wells Texas. We left Camp Walters 15 July 1943 for our new destination, which we learned was Camp Callan, La Jolla, California. Prior to my stay at Camp Callan, a significant change for the camp had begun in March 1942. The military had seen the terrible damage the German Luftwaffe, had inflicted on the United Kingdom, so they decided to place full training emphasis on anti-aircraft weapons rather than on a combination of seacoast artillery and anti-aircraft weapons. This change marked the beginning of a two-year period of peak activity for the camp. Approximately fifteen thousand trainees were going through their training during each thirteen week training cycle. The trainees learned to use 155mm, 90mm, 75mm, and 40mm caliber guns. Camp Callan was a United States Army anti-aircraft artillery replacement training center. My unit in July 1943 was assigned to 40 mm anti-aircraft weapons, we were known as the 3rd Platoon, Battery “C”, 57th A.A. Training Battalion, located near Linda Vista California. Our training there was from dawn to dusk, we even trained in the Borrego Desert. Camp Callan was on the same lands then that is now known as Scripps Hospital, located in the vicinity of present day Genesee Avenue and North Torrey Pines Road. We left Camp Callan, November 23rd 1943 for our new destination to Ft. Bliss, Texas. My personal words: While at Camp Callan my mother and my “wife to be” left Dallas by train to visit me at Del Mar, California. Their trip took 4 days by train and was filled with troops, with no place for the girls to sit. The girls sat on their suitcases. They got off the train at the old Del Mar Station, 21 September 1943. I put them up for their stay at the old Del Mar Hotel, they had never seen or been to such a beautiful place. Their hotel room cost was $4 dollars a day, they stayed there five days. The old hotel later burned and the site is now the L’Auberge Hotel. Today the good people at the L’Auberge hotel know me well. The old station is still there. Today the train from San Diego does not stop at Del Mar. It was there on the beach at Del Mar that I asked the love of my life to marry me. NOTE: Recently I asked the L’Auberge Hotel to allow me to have a bench with our names on the hotel grounds. Two days later, I had my bench. My memoires at this place are still loved and strong. NUMBER 2 November 23rd 1943, our unit was sent to Ft. Bliss, Texas, where we became Head Quarters Battery 811 AAA Gun Battalion. We were assigned to 90MM caliber guns. This lasted until the middle of April 1944. Our unit was then sent to Camp Swift, which was a staging area, just outside Austin, Texas, which was nothing more than a stopover for my assignment to enter the war in Europe against Germany. The name, 1284th Company “B” Combat Engineer, Company “B”” was only a part of 1284th Combat Engineer Battalion of company’s A,B,C and D . My personal words: On December 24, 1943 at Ft. Bliss, Texas my high school Girl – friend became my wife. When we left Ft. Bliss my wife followed me to Camp Swift Austin, Texas. She got a job with the State and made $25 dollars a week. I made $65 a month from the army. NUMBER 3 – LEAVING THE U.S. World War II was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945. On 6 June 1944 (known as D-Day) was the start of the war in Europe against the Germans. The Japanese were still active in the Pacific. The 5th December 1944, we got our orders to leave for the War in Europe. We left Austin, Texas by train to New York. We arrived in NY in the night to board our ship the “HMS Esperance Bay”. As we looked around we saw many ships in and around us. Some time during the night we boarded our ship. To our surprise this ship was small and probably the worst to cross the Atlantic Ocean. We left NY on the 9th of December 1944, in the dead of winter for our unknown destination. The Atlantic Ocean at the time was un-believably rough. Later, we were told that Bristol, England was our destination. Many ships were with us for the crossing. It took 12 days. On 21 December 1944 we arrived at the Bristol harbor. We then boarded a train that took us to the little town of Gloucester. Snow was on the ground and the camp housings meager. It was then 10 days before Christmas. At Gloucester we were given intensive ground combat training. NUMBER 4 – MY LAST DAYS ACROSS FRANCE, BELGIUM AND GERMANY The war in Europe was fast coming to its end. The Germans were fighting the Russians on their eastern front while the Allies were pounding them from the west. 10 February 1945, we travelled to the port city of Portsmouth, England to cross the channel. Our destination was from Portsmouth England to Le Havre, France, this was only a one (1) day crossing. Upon our landing at Le Havre, we saw nothing but destruction, it was unbelievable. You could stand on a chair and see that everything was destroyed. From Le Havre, we traveled to the little town of Rouen, along the Seine River. We stayed at Rouen for five days to gather our supplies. The 1284th Combat Engineer Battalion began a fast and long journey across France to Belgium and Germany to fight the Germans. While we were going across France, it was nothing to see a thousand of our planes drop bombs to pound the eastern part of Belgium and Germany along the Rhine and the Ruhr rivers. We did not know it at the time but the area we were heading was known as the Battle of the Bulge. Our job was to stop the German troops and the last threat from German General Von Rundstedt. Our battalion entered this battle about January 1945. During this period we were to clear mine fields, make road blocks and build bridges to stop Von Rundstedt’s last ditch stand. NUMBER 5 – LAST DAYS OF THE WAR IN EUROPE About 1st April 1945, I was put on detached service from my battalion to help take charge of four prisoner of war camps in and around the towns of Dusseldorf, Wuppertal and Mulheim, Germany. Each one of these stockades was the equivalent in size of two football fields. Each of these stockades were enclosed by wire and armed with American soldiers. The prisoners were coming in by the truck loads every day. They had no shelter to get out of the cold but simply dug holes in the ground to get out of the cold. They were furnished food only twice a day. Each stockade held about 100,000 or more prisoners. Early one morning my Captain called me into his office and said that Hans Goebbels, brother to Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister for Hitler, had been captured but for some reason was put into one of our stockades by mistake. Five of us were given front and side pictures and told to go into the stockade and find Goebbels. We stayed in the stockade for about twenty minutes when everyone in the stockade begun to look like Goebbels. We told the Captain that it was impossible to find him. We had four German Generals also in the stockade. We told them that if they did not turn over Goebbels at once their food ration would be cut to one a day. The next day they turned him over. I took him back to my office where he was seated beside me. I opened the drawer to my desk and there was a candy bar, he looked at it and said in German, he had not eaten in three days. I gave him the candy bar and big tears came in his eyes. He reached into his pocket and gave me his passport that showed all the places in Europe where he had been. I knew that if my higher ups knew I had the passport I would never see it again. I put the passport in my pocket and never told anyone I had it. I now have the passport in my safe deposit box in Dallas, Texas. The War in Europe ended 7th May 1945 On the 7th of May 1945, the 1284th Companies “A,B,C,D” Combat Engineers Battalion had a parade in Dusseldorf, Germany to celebrate the end of the war, . Both sides of the street were packed with German people, mostly women, crying for the loss of their husbands deaths, homes destroyed and that the end of the war in Europe had ended and for the devastation and deaths they had endured. NUMBER 6 – THE WAR WITH JAPAN HAD NOT ENDED On the 10 July, 1945, twenty six days after the end of the war in Europe, we were given our orders to leave for Marseille, France. We left Dusseldorf Germany and traveled south to Aachen, Luxembourg, Metz, Nancy, Dijon, Lyon, and finely arrived at Arles, France, a suburb of Marseille. We were there for about two weeks. We then boarded our ship, with about 4000 other troops. We left Marseille, traveled thru the strait of Gibraltar, Spain and was then on our way to the Panama Canal. At Cristobal, Panama, we refueled, went thru the Canal and proceeded on our way across the Pacific Ocean, to where, we did not know. We had a stop-over at Holandia, New Guinea, it is now known as Port Moresby, New Guinea. As we were in port to refuel, I was below deck and all of a sudden heavy guns from our ship were being fired. My first thought was the Japanese were attacking. I ran up on deck and was informed the Japanese had surrendered. We later learned that on 6th August 1945 an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and another bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki. The time of Japanese surrender was 15th August 1945.The World War was now over. NUMBER 7 – MY TIME ON LUZON in the PHILIPPINE’S After refueling at Holandia , New Guinea, we were soon in the Philippine’s, as we proceeded, we landed at Manila, Luzon on the 21 August 1945. The Ocean trip from Marseille, France to Manila took us 45 days. After landing at Manila, we proceeded on to Clark Field, a few miles north of Manila. We were at Clark Field for about two weeks. The air field was completely destroyed. Numerous Japanese air planes were still on the ground but were in shambles. The Japanese, for their lack of communications and not knowing the war was over, were still fighting in the jungles. From Clark Field we traveled north and built our tent camps as we went along, we never knew what village we were in. We finely ended up in the jungles at the little village of San Jose. There was many in our battalion that contacted malaria. I had jungle fever for three days with a temperature of 105, this was 9 Oct. 1945. It was not uncommon that in any early morning, while the mess sergeant was cooking breakfast, that many Japanese troops would come out of the jungles to our camp, surrender and eat with us. This was the 30th October 1945. We departed Luzon on the 28 January 1946 and headed to San Francisco, USA. We arrived in San Francisco on the 15th February, 1946. This trip took 20 days. NUMBER 8 – MY TIME ABOARD SHIPS 1). 11 Days – Crossing the Atlantic Ocean from N.Y. to Bristol, England 2). 1 Day crossing from Portsmouth, England to Le Havre, France 3). 45 days – From Marseille, France to Manila, Luzon Philippines, Pacific Ocean 4). 20 days- From Manila, Philippines to San Francisco, USA Total – 77 days – I spent 77 days on ships. This is probably more time I spent on ships than many US sailors. NUMBER 9 – MY DISCHARGE– SAN FRANCISCO TO FORT SAM HOUSTON, TEXAS I was discharged from the US Army on 23 February 1946 at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. After my dismissal, I traveled back to my wife, parents and my home in Dallas, Texas. This was the end of my part of the war in Europe and the Philippines. MY DECORATIONS and CITATIONS The 1284th Company “B” Engineer Combat Battalion My discharge: Rank as corporal, military occupational specialty: clerk typist, military qualifications: Expert rifleman, Central Europe: Decorations and Citations: Good conduct medal, Victory Medal, 2 overseas service bars, American theater campaign Medal, EAME Campaign Medal with 1 Bronze Star, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, Philippine Liberation Medal. MY START BACK HOME Upon arriving home, my father got me a job working for McKesson & Robins Drug Company. I made $35.00 a week. My wife got a job with a clothing manufacturing company and made $20.00 dollars a week. We lived with our parents for months. In late December after being home for almost a year, we were expecting our first baby, my wife was seven months pregnant. It was difficult to find any kind of home or apartment to rent. We found a house on South Blvd., in south Dallas, that a woman owned. She had converted the house into a four unit apartment complex. We rented one of the small apartment units and were so happy. It was then 6 days before Christmas, 1947. We had a small room that was our bedroom, a small kitchen & bathroom. About two o’clock in the morning my wife woke me and said the little kitchen was on fire. I opened the kitchen door and a flood of fire hit me, I closed the door and got her & myself outside into the cold. Everything we had was destroyed including all my military belongings. The only clothes we had were the night clothes we were wearing. We now had no clothes, no shoes and little money. Nothing was left for us but our love for each other. Our son, Reginald A. Lang was born two months later on 21 February 1947. After a few months with low paying jobs, I decided to go to college. I found the US Government would pay for my collage. I applied for and entered Southern Methodist University in 1948. I chose Geology as my major. While I was in college, I needed a part time job to make ends meet. I called on several big oil & gas operators and was hired by Mr. Bert Fields. Mr. Fields had made his money in the famous East Texas Oil Fields, together with having many gas wells in East Texas, together with a big oil play going on in New Mexico. I was assigned as assistant to his geologist, Mr. Paul Osborne. Our office was in the old Magnolia Building, the tallest in down town Dallas. After attending school each day, I would go downtown to my job with Mr. Osborne , I worked under his supervision for about two years. I learned more about the practical side of the oil and gas business in this period than I ever did at SMU. About the end of this period, a good friend I had in high school had a good job with Standard Oil Company of Texas, which was a part of the Standard Oil Company of California. He got me my first full time job with Standard Oil Company of Texas. In my first few months with Standard of Texas, my exploration superintendent, put me in charge of training and assignments of geologist to work certain prospects. We had about 25 geologists who were assigned by me to various prospective areas in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. While there, I began to notice that every time a good job came up it was assigned to others. I walked into the exploration manager’s office and asked him, “why am I always passed up for the better jobs”, his response was, you are a “victim of circumstances”. I asked, what is that? He told me the older geologists did not like to work under a younger geologist and you look too young. I went home that night and told my wife that if that was their policy, I would be doing the same job for the next ten years. I told her I was going to resign and go into the oil and gas business for myself. I knew where all the Standard oil & gas prospects were located, the next day on Dec. 05, 1949, I resigned. Having resigned from Standard Oil Company of Texas, I had little money saved. The next day, I visited my mentor, Bert Fields. I told him I had resigned from Standard Oil and was going into the Oil & Gas business, but I had no money. I asked him if he could furnish me with some money until I could put together an oil or gas deal. He asked, how much do you need, I said about $1500.00 a month. He asked me how long it might take to make my first deal. I said it might take two or three months. He called in his secretary and told her, “cut Glenn a check for $1,500.00 a month, until I tell you to quit.” It took me two months to develop my first deal. I made $20,000.00. That was more money I had ever seen or made. That same year, I made more money than the exploration manager. Bert Fields put me in the oil and gas business. In the next few months of 1950, I made several good oil & gas deals. In the latter part of 1950 on a trip to New York, I met a friend of mine, Bill Dillon, a lawyer for Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett, one of the largest firms on Wall Street. He offered me to have lunch with him and two of his client’s, one of which was Dave Bright, a wealthy, Beverly Hills, California man. While the four of us were having lunch, a lot of the conversation was about the City of Hope, a Jewish charity, not a word was directed to me. After a while one of the gentlemen asked me what I did, I told them that I was in the oil and gas business in Texas, at the same time, I gave him a check for $1500.00 and I said, give this to the City of Hope. They could not believe it. That night we had dinner at the Baltusrol Country Club in New Jersey. I guess the word was out that I gave money to the City Of Hope, as several Jewish men talked to me at the bar and wanted to invest with me in the oil and gas business in Texas. I walked out that night with $125,000.00 worth of pledges. Others who had invested with me put me in touch with other millionaires, such as Victor Nimeroff, of Chicago. Dave Bright and I became good friends and he introduced me to a number of people who invested with me. In 1952, after so many trips back and forth from Dallas to Los Angeles, California, I become good friends with Steve Crain, who owned the famous Luau Hawaiian restaurant in Beverly Hills. His wife was Lana Tuner, one of the biggest movie stars at the time. Having the restaurant, he knew everyone in the movie business and anyone who was rich. He and I became close friends. At night I had my own table at the restaurant. I always stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a room at the time cost $65.00. He and I soon got together in the oil and gas business. Example: I would tell him I had a good prospect and would cost $150,000 to drill, we could cream off the top about $35,000 for ourselves and keep part of the royalty interest. In a matter of a few days he would call and say, I am sending you the money. It was so easy! In my many trips to Beverly Hills, I played tennis every day behind the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, on Wilshire Blvd., with many of my rich friends, such as Baron and Nicky Hilton and lunch or dinner with many others. I was friends with, Shemp Howard, one of the three stooges. He and his wife were the first to introduce us to the Del Mar Race track. Being in California so much of the time and since our investors were there, later on I would rent a house in Beverly Hills, for the months of June, July and August. This was our get away from the Texas heat. Our baby girl, Kimberly Ann Lang, was born May 21, 1953. In 1958 till 1961, things started to get bad for the oil & gas business, oil was paying less than two dollars per bbl. I decided that I would get out of the Oil and Gas business for a while and go into housing and apartment building. Note: In 1961, my wife got a job as secretary to the Rt. Rev., C. Avery Mason, Bishop of the Diocese of Dallas. He died in 1970. After the death of Bishop Mason, the Rt. Rev. Archibald Donald Davies, on 22 June 1970, became Bishop of the Diocese of Dallas until, 1 January 1983. The Rt. Rev. Davies recently died April 15, 2011. My wife for many years was secretary to two great men of Dallas. In early 1962, I formed Centro Development. I was the first and only company in Texas to take advantage of what was little known about Urban Renewal projects. The government was to spend billions of dollars on these projects all over the country for low-income people in blighted areas and many properties that were just blighted. The government would clear the project, furnish paved streets, curbs and gutters, and put in new water and sewerage, and parks. The kicker for me was that any owner of the lots would pay nothing for the development. There was an Urban Renewal project, in Irving, Texas, known as Tyree Estates, that was over two years old but never approved by the Government. Just a few weeks prior to approval, I bought the property, all 400 lots for $25.00 per lot. The FHA later awarded me $2,500.00 per lot to build houses for low-income black people. Houses I built and sold were $12,000.00. During a period of two years, I built 400 houses on my property and 385 units of apartments not in the Urban Renewal. I had no problem getting money for apartments. We sold fifteen to twenty houses on a week end. I was sitting in my car at one of my apartments building 22 November 1963, and got the message that President Kennedy had been assassinated. The apartments we had in Irving were later sold to a New York group. The building business had tanked, apartments were overbuilt and banks stopped lending. We sold out in 1964.That was the end of Centro Development. I went back to the oil and gas business. 1965 until 1977, I spent most of my time buying my own leases for shallow oil in a dozen or more counties. I would buy a lease and flip it to other oil and gas operators, if I bought for $45.00 dollars, I would sell for $75.00 and keep a small royalty interest. I just happened to be doing some deals in Pearsall, Texas when the Pearsall oil boom started in mid 1975. At the start of the boom, we started off and bought as low as $35 to $40 dollars an acre. I helped lease about 18,000 acres, the price of leases rose daily and was up to $500.00 per acre. I was gone from Dallas 5 days a week, home only on the weekends , this was no way to have a wife & children. I stayed with the Austin Chalk until end of 1975. I still made a few oil & gas deals until 1977. I then quit the oil and gas business NY SON AND I IN THE FOOD BUSINESS Our house of 58 years is in an area with many of our Italians friends, such as Sam, Joe Campisi (both now deceased) and son Corkie Campisi . The daughter of Sam , still lives only three houses from our home. We were so close to the Italian people in our area that when our daughter was married, Sam’s daughter, Denise Campisi, was her maid of honor. In the middle of 1977, my son and I opened our first pizza store on Lovers Lane. We named our store Reggio’s Pizzeria. We did very well, so well that we bought Colombo’s Pizza, on Mockingbird Lane. We then had some people in New York that joined us. They furnished the money and we opened five more stores. My wife and I, during the good days traveled extensively over Europe. On one such trip, me, my wife & daughter took a three week trip to Europe. We traveled to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. We liked Italy and the Amalfi coast because it was so beautiful, we found our dream place at the little town of Positano. We stayed at the Hotel Le Sirenuse . It was our second trip there. One evening we were sitting outside having dinner, overlooking the island of Capri. The cook was making pizza from a wood-burning oven. He was cooking a pizza in a matter of four minutes. I could not believe it. I knew it took at least 20 minutes to cook a pizza in a Dallas oven. I talked to him about his oven. I was shown that it gave out no heat but the temperature inside was 700 degrees. He told me the manufacturer was located between Rome and Florence in the little town of Modena. When we went back to Rome, I told the girls, I was going to go to Modena and see those ovens. I took a shuttle flight to Modena the next day and visited my new friend, Malaguti, the owner. He had sold ovens all over Italy. During that day, I made a deal with him that gave me the rights to sell his ovens in the US. Malaguti came to Dallas to instruct us in building the ovens. We then sold ovens to various restaurants in various parts of the US .We built a large pizza restaurant in Garland, Texas, from the ground up. This was our downfall and the worst investment I had ever made. Two years later we were out of pizza business. At a later date I again visited Italy and visited with my friend Malaguti. He made a call to some of his friends in Parma, only a few miles from Modena. He told them we were to have dinner with his American friends and would like them to join us. Little did I know, we were to have dinner with the sons of the giant Barilla Pasta Company. During dinner, they asked if I would like to see their pasta operation. I met them the next day and was shown over their whole operation. Big, Big, Big. I made a deal with them to furnish me Barilla pasta in the US. I paid them $20,000 dollar for my first order. Upon arrival of my order, I rented a large warehouse in Irving, Texas. I had no problem selling my pasta. The big problem I had was with the big chain stores. For every ten cases of pasta they bought, they wanted three cases free. They called this, “their shelf space cost”. I refused to pay for shelf space. I then sold my pasta to others than the big boys. Barilla Pasta and sauce is now in all of the big food chain stores. I was just too early for the sale of Barilla products. I went back to my oil and gas business. My son went into the car business. BACK TO THE OIL & GAS BUSINESS In 1979, I formed Lang Exploration with my son, Reggie Lang, who was back in the oil & gas business with me. We bought a 4,000 acre oil & gas lease, south of San Antonio, Texas, the surface of the lease was owned by Gerald Lyda. (Note) at a later date, hereof, I will give my relationship I have with the Lyda family. In a few weeks we had us a partner for the development of the lease, our partner for the development was two of the richest men in Ocean City, MD. They agreed to furnish all the money for development drilling. The wells drilled were only 2200 hundred feet deep, a well could be drilled and completed in 6 days. The production was small, ranging from 8 to 15 bbls per day. Our monthly production was 4 to 5 hundred bbls. In 1983 oil was selling for $34.00 per bbl. The price of oil was volatile, up one day and down the next. My secretary came in one day and handled me my mail. I had a letter from a large company that gathered our oil, for the lack of no pipe line, it simply read, “As of this date our company will not be gathering oil in your area and we advise you to get another carrier”. At this period of time our investors were trying to buy us out. I called my son in and told him, the big boys are running, so it’s a good time for us to sell out. We sold out to them in 1982, price of oil at that time was $34.00 per/bbl, in a matter of six months oil was trading at $10.00 per bbl. We got out just in time! HISTORY OF GERALD LYDA Gerald Lyda, formed his own construction company in 1960, based in San Antonio, Texas. The Lyda organization grew to be the largest general contractor in Texas, with projects such as the Tower of the Americas, Hemis Fair Arena, Theatre for the Performing Arts and the San Antonio Convention Center for Hemis Fair and in 1968 built the Alamo-Dome, Westin La Canter Resort Hotel, Hyatt Hill Country Resort Hotel, Westin River Walk Hotel, Diamond Shamrock Corporate Headquarters and Fiesta Texas, were built by Lyda Inc. or its subsidiary Lyda Constructors, Inc. The construction business allowed Mr. Lyda to return to his love, “ranching”. Du
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