From business to bulls, Bart and Martye
Simmons have blended book knowledge
and experience with considerable joie de
vivre to build a family, a company and a
life with faith as its backbone and laughter
at its heart.
In talking with Martye (Sculley) ’78 and Bart Simmons ’78, ’79, it’s
evident theirs is a warm relationship of long standing between two
people who thoroughly enjoy being in one another’s company. They
married one week after graduation in August 1978, knew each other
since high school, raised three sons and built a business that has
grown into five successful companies headquartered in Dallas. They
torture cattle on the weekends.
“You brand ’em, you worm ’em, you tag and notch their ears,
you dehorn ’em, you castrate ’em. It sounds crazy, but we have a lot
of fun doin’ it all,” Bart said. “My son calls it a medieval torture
chamber for cows,” Martye said.
They love ranch life, but they didn’t start out living it.
Both grew up in Beaumont. Martye’s father, George Sculley ’40,
’55, ’69, was a C.P.A. and taught accounting at Lamar for nearly
three decades. Bart’s father was in the grocery business and worked
for Stedman Co. As a professor’s daughter, Martye came to know
her parents’ friends—most of who were fellow faculty members—
and attended Cardinal football and basketball games as well as theatre
productions from the time she was 5 years old. When it was
time to select a college, they both chose to attend Lamar.
Martye pledged Zeta Tau Alpha, and Bart became a football
letterman and SGA president. They were memorable years. Both
became business majors and cite the variety of campus life as their
most vivid memory. “We just had so much fun there between the
football games, the activities, the socials,” Bart said, and Martye adds,
“Basketball games, the opening of the library and the new business
building.” But one activity in particular springs to mind—the
Students for Free Enterprise. Larry Spradley advised the small
group of business majors, often inviting the entrepreneurial-minded
students to his home. “It was very special,” Martye said.
His eye on the future, Bart decided to attend graduate school.
With the economics of being young and married, coupled with their
confidence in the curriculum, he chose Lamar’s M.B.A. program,
headed by Robert Swerdlow. “You couldn’t have asked for a better
mentor,” Bart said. Martye became an accountant for T.E. Moor and
took a class at night to keep her student I.D., so they could go to
basketball games. After graduation, they moved to Houston to
work at Texaco in Bellaire, Martye on the fourth floor and Bart
on the seventh.
A few years later, Bart left Texaco to work for TXO/Delhi, and
Martye earned a real estate license. At the same time their first child,
Grant, was born, they were transferred to Tyler, where son Trent was
born, and, later, to Dallas, where their youngest, Andrew, was born.
Grant is now married to a fellow Aggie and is a banker for Frost
Bank in Dallas. Trent also works in Dallas, and Andrew has followed
his elder brother to University of Oklahoma.
In 1992, after a few years with Petrus Oil Co., Bart and a
partner started their own company—Tristar Gas Marketing, which
became Tristar Producer Services in 2002. The natural gas and marketing
company is now an umbrella for four other ventures: Tristar
Compression Co.; Mid-States Energy Co., a natural gas marketing
company; Simray Oil & Gas Co., an oil and gas production company
with operated wells in west and south Texas; and, newest to the
stable, Texas Power Co. When Tristar bought a majority ownership
interest in the electric provider company in 2006, it had 4,000 customers.
Today, it’s grown to about 25,000 and will continue to
grow as new areas open to competition, Martye said.
On the production side, Simray is planning to drill in North
Dakota as well as West Texas this year.
But by 3 or 4 p.m., Bart is out the door and on his way home,
and he and Martye will often head to their ranch—the Double S
Ranch—west of town. This is their first year as empty-nesters
and they’re enjoying the extra time together, even with other
commitments.
As a finance committee member at their church, Martye keeps
the books and keeps an eye on her mother, who lives nearby. She
also handles the books at the ranch. “My idea of ranch accounting is
I like to put receipts up on the dashboard,” Bart said. “I’ll be digging
through my file,’ Martye said, “and he’ll say, ‘I think that’s at
the office.’ You know, I need that at MY office. He’s so meticulous
with everything at Tri Star, and I’m like,
what did you do with that???” Bart said,
“Ohhh, I think that’s in my boot!”
What they enjoy most about their
relationship is the humor. “She’ll get me
tickled, and we both just laugh a whole
lot,” Bart said. “Bart is a glass-half-full
person,” Martye said. “There is never a
problem. There is always a solution.”
When Martye’s not cajoling receipts out of Bart, or worse, fishing
them out of his boot, she supports the Seats for Kids program
as a member of the Dallas Summer Musicals board of directors.
The Dallas Summer Musicals program brings Broadway and live
theatre—such as Cats, Stomp and Hairspray—to hundreds of low
income, at-risk and special-needs children. After morning walks with
her sister, Mary Holleman ’73, she spends time in Bible study and
volunteers weekly as a tutor for a Dallas elementary school.
The two have built a professionally successful and personally
rewarding life. Students with the dream of owning their own business
can learn from the couple’s experience. As young graduates,
they both wanted self-sufficiency in their future, but “you’ve got to
have patience,” Bart said.
“I had learned the science of it from Lamar,” Bart said, “but I
had to go out there and just learn the art of it. You’ve got to have
some capital, and then you’ve got to have the relationships, so when
you go out, you can make it happen.” Martye’s advice is “don’t ever
lose sight of your dream and be disciplined. Live within your
means, save your money, so when the timing is right, you’ll have the
capital to go.”
That melding of book learning and experience is echoed on the
ranch. Bart took classes at Texas Christian University, and they hired
an experienced cowboy to help work the ranch. “We have learned so
much,” Bart said. “I know the science of it, and he knows the art of
it. You learn that behind every cattleman is a good grass man.”
“Lamar set us up to be entrepreneurs,” Bart said. “It was a
great incubator of all those deals we wanted to do.” Bart said. “And
that’s probably why we’re so passionate about Lamar,” Martye said.
Bart agreed, “We love it, and we want to give back to it. We feel like
we are where we are because of it.”
Martye and Bart wanted to honor Martye’s parents and to help
Lamar students, so they established the George and Patricia Sculley
Scholarship in Business. Inspired by Dean Henry Venta’s vision for
the College of Business, they later created an endowment within the
college to provide resources for the dean to “help bring the school
of business to where he envisioned it.” The endowment is designed
to either support scholarships or other areas the dean defines to help
realize college goals. The couple’s most recent commitment is to the
football program to name the practice field. “The business school
and football were such a big part of Martye’s and my lives that those
are the two areas we’re going to concentrate on,” Bart said.
Martye said, “President Jimmy
Simmons started in the right place and
built everything up in the right way.”
She enjoys seeing continued improvement
at Lamar. “I hope Lamar gains
status all across Southeast Texas and
across the state,” she said. “They say it’s
like the little hidden jewel. I hope it will
be polished up and emerge as a true presence.”
“We’re proud to be a part of this initial capital campaign, and I
think it’s going to be a steamroller,” Bart said. “You’re going to see
so many other alumni want to give. It’s going to build a future for
the Martyes and Barts of the future.”
The Simmonses champion education as one of the best philanthropic
investments. What Lamar offers in terms of hands-on attention—
when the dean knows the names of students—can make all
the difference in the quality of an educational experience, Martye
said. “If you want to invest in the future, invest in Lamar,” Bart
said. “We have made our decision,” Martye said. “Our monies will
go to our church and to our college.”
The Simmonses’ message to President Simmons is “thank you,”
Martye said. “Definitely thank you,” Bart agreed. “He’s made
Martye and me proud. And it’s fun to feel pride. We [Lamar] will
always serve Southeast Texas. It makes you proud that kids from
Southeast Texas want to go there not just because it’s in Southeast
Texas but also because it’s a great university. I think it’s time for
Lamar—with the leadership we now have and the resources we
are gathering—to look beyond Southeast Texas—to look at being a
university for the nation.”
“It’s time to let the secret out of the box,” Martye said. “It has
so much to offer.”
