Claibourne Clay G. Laird

Clay Laird was born June 21, 1941 to Carl and Merle Laird in Hamilton, TX where he grew up and attended school. He had two sisters, Terry Sue Young and Kay Timmons. Upon graduation in 1959, he joined the US Air Force. He enjoyed traveling to new places and was stationed in Alaska for several years. When he returned home, he worked for Geotech in Dallas, and on weekends when he came home, he met his future wife, Pat Marshall. We married June 11, 1966. At that time he was working in Lincoln, Nebraska for the Airforce secretly monitoring nuclear blast seismology from Russia. With Geotech we got to travel to many locations. Clay had taken classes in Arlington and Alaska. He graduated from Tarleton about 6 months after his son, Chris was born on Dec. 16, 1973. We moved to Bryan College Station where he attended A & M University. He received his Master’s Degree with a major in Engineering and the new field of Computer Science. He worked for Texas Instruments for the next 4 years before becoming a Computer Analyst Consultant. He worked for Texas Instruments, Texas A & M, DFW Airport, and numerous lawyers designing bankruptcy software. On June 16, 1983 his daughter, Lisa was born to complete the family.

Clay enjoyed taking trips with his children in the summers; he enjoyed watching their sports and all their activities.

His grandchildren were the highlight of his life. He enjoyed spending part of everyday with Addie and Emma. Their eyes would light up when they saw him coming. He took them on wagon rides as long as he could, always stopping near the mailbox to pick a wildflower for Addie who would hold it all the way back to the house, Emma preferred to just eat hers. Then came the exciting arrival of his first grandson, Copper.Clay worked all the time at one project or another. He was always keeping in touch with old friends. His latest hobbies was copying our videos of British Columbia and Alaska which he talked about often. Being a great father, he was very supportive and encouraging of his children’s dreams and accomplishments.

I think he would sum up his life saying that, “I didn’t get to everything I wanted to do, but I enjoyed doing everything that I did.”