Roger Staubach, Richard Rainwater, Money Disappearance

Bye, bye $80,000,000 1980's dollars.

$80m 'soft circled' by a few pension funds but destroyed when Roger Staubach accepted a $1,500,000 investment in his company by Richard Rainwater.

Texas real estate, had taken a heavy hit in the 80's when oil prices collapsed. Houston and Austin were particularly hard hit and looked to me, to represent great investment values. And I had convinced Roger that Staubach Co. should be the GP of a private equity, real estate investment fund while I was to be the Placement Agent and partner in the deal.

Through an FDIC executive I had met Roger Staubach, who turned out to be an all time, all time, great guy including being modest to a fault. Associating with Roger grew to be a great privilege for me. Roger who wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful had some difficulty with my foul mouth, but survived it.

Roger is a spiritual, devout Catholic and the Church has been a great beneficiary of Roger's spirituality and money.

Staubach Co. in those days was primarily a placement company for companies that were moving or setting up facilities in different communities. Roger's group would scout out the new town for employee housing, warehouses and manufacturing facilities.

Roger was a perpetual motion machine, an incredibly hard working guy. The only thing he was missing, I told him, was a broom stick shoved up his ass. Punctuality and Roger weren't even kissing cousins. We missed a flight to Detroit to see Chrysler when Roger Dodger, That Almost Always Late Codger was late to the Newark Airport. A very upset Jew would have described me perfectly.

If Roger had a fault it would have been his penchant for his endless presentations of the deal to the potential investors. He tended to go on and on and did sometimes generate glassy eyed audiences. For me, with the attention span of a moth on a hot light bulb, those presentations were excruciating. At a presentation in Pittsburgh to top executives of the now deceased National Steel, I did suggest to the group, in an effort to liven things up, that Roger did have a tendency to take the 13th AA step, not in the big book, where you become powerless over your own bullshit.

Roger and I were at Muscle Beach (aka Venice, California) where we were to meet with Jim George, the then head of the State of Oregon Pension Fund. Roger and I were walking down the street when a guy startled both Roger and me when he walked up to us, saluted Roger and said "To a great American". In Manhattan another guy walked up to us to shake Roger's hand and said 'God bless you.' You can multiply those experiences ten fold....It was a wonder to me that Roger always kept his modesty.

When, in the interest of full disclosure, I told the guy from the State of Delaware that Roger was bringing Rainwater in as an investor in Staubach Co. the Delaware guy said, 'Count me out. I don't want to be on either side of the table with Richard Rainwater. Dealing with Rainwater once was plenty enough for me.' This in spite of the fact that Rainwater had built a reputation as a very smart money manager, managing money for the Fort Worth Bass brothers.

I pleaded with Roger to pass on Rainwater but it was like pissing into the wind. When the other potential investors heard that Delaware had kissed off the deal, so did they. Pension funds tend to be like fucking sheep. Bye, bye $80m in soft circles and over a year of my life plus several hundred thousand dollars of my own money that I spent on travel and entertainment expenses. I too had become powerless over my own bullshit and in the end, suicidal to boot.

But having had dinner with Rainwater and his first wife at Roger's house I did understand the refusal of the potential investor to deal with Rainwater. For starters, Rainwater set a very high bar for unbelievable arrogance though he did suck up to Roger. And when Rainwater's then wife would try to join in to the dinner conversation he would cut her off and start talking, treating her just as though she was an idiot. Rainwater had a weight problem and he had Maryanne Staubach make a special dinner for him.

Rainwater exuded arrogance. One of my kids, Matt, went to see Rainwater who kept him waiting for about 45 minutes. The Great Man let Matt into his office, bragged to Matt for around 20 minutes about successful investments and then dismissed him. Never bothered to ask Matt why he, Matt, was there to see him. Make no mistake, Rainwater was a genius investor and has made hundreds of millions of dollars but I wouldn't piss in his ear if his head was on fire.

Being around Rainwater was like spending time with a red neck relative. Spending time with Roger Staubach, a true gentleman and family man with a spirituality and an exceptional business man, was one of the great, upbeat experiences of my life.