Troy Gray will blow the gusher for his last time Friday

At 5:30 p.m. Friday, Spindletop Gladys City Boomtown Museum Director Troy Gray will blow the gusher for a final time.

December 30th  marks Gray’s last day at the museum before moving on to Midland, where he will be site manager of The Bush Family Home museum, run by the Texas State Historical Society.

The move will be something of a lifelong dream forged when Gray was a child.

“My uncle used to guard the White House, and I visited the White House in between my second and third year of elementary school, and I just fell in love with presidential history. My whole reason of getting into museums was to get into presidential history more, so this is something that I really wanted to do. I didn’t care if it was Zachary Taylor or who it was – just the whole thing about being presidential history strikes me,” Gray said.

He’ll arrive there next year armed with seven years of experience heading the grounds, programming and leadership at Spindletop – a museum that today is far different from the one Gray encountered when his first footprint was set in the dirt of the boomtown village in July of 2015.

It wasn’t Gray’s first museum job. The opening slot on that portion of his resume goes to the Mayborn Museum, where he worked while pursuing a master’s in museum studies at Baylor University in 2006. After graduation came a job at the Dr. Pepper Museum, then the Waco Mammoth Museum – a National Parks site.

“The types of museums I’ve worked at has been varied,” he said.

When the director position at Spindletop opened, Gray was serving as interim director at the Bell County Museum in Belton, TX.

 “I was there about 6 months, but I liked Spindletop, because I worked for a woman at the Bell County Museum that was there 20 years. I felt like if I took over there, I would be walking in her footprints, and I wanted to walk in my own – I felt like I could do that here,” he said.

Related: Boomtown celebrates Spindletop 120th anniversary

The Spindletop Museum first opened in 1976 – more than 50 years after the kernel of its idea first popped on the 50th anniversary of the Lucas Gusher in 1951. Its opening was timed to the national bicentennial, and then-First Lady Betty Ford was part of the opening ceremonies.

For decades, the Spindletop Museum was under the leadership of a woman who took on the role while working as a secretary at Lamar University from 1979 through nearly 2011.

Others who followed were studying history or American Studies while at Lamar University’s graduate school, but “I was the first director in a long time with a museum background,” Gray said.

And when he arrived, the museum had been without any director for a good year.

“Everything shut down – they didn’t have anything going,” Gray said, adding, “I was surprised that there was no fundraiser, there were no programs. Even without a director, there should have been something there. It seemed like I was given a 40-year-old baby, because everything that should have been in a museum was not there.”

Gray restarted some of the programs that had been in place, like opening it to the public and schools for tours.

But there was also the physical state of the facility that needed attention.

“People loved (the museum) because it looked old – but it seemed like every time the wind blew, wood would fall off the buildings. So, we knew that there were facility problems,” he said.

But all of that is part of why Gray took the job. “I knew there was so much that could be done,” he said.

Gray jumped in, walking his baby through its toddler steps to maturity as quickly as he could, while building needed foundations that had never been in place before.

“It was pretty bad. Many people in the community – a lot of the business people and others – they hadn’t been here in a long time. There was nobody from the oil companies on the advisory council. It was just kind of a museum that was great, because it was very important to Texas history, and they opened their door and people came in,” he said.

There were tours for schoolchildren, but largely they included a simple introduction before turning them loose on the grounds, Gray noted.

To make the Spindletop Museum the historical, community resource it could and deserved to be would take some work.

Related: Spindletop Museum adds new exhibit building

“I had to really remake what that would look like, and that was very difficult without volunteers” and a staff he described as, “I don’t know if they were just burned out or what, but that was also something that I had to do was try and spur action in them.”

Eventually, Gray was able to hire additional staff.

“Most of the staff here now have been with me since Imelda, and so they’re very constant and dedicated to the museum. I love them, because they look out for this museum. After every storm, after they find themselves safe, they’d call me to see how the museum is, and I think that’s a very good thing that I was able to instill in them,” Gray said.

But staffing issues and restarting programming was only the first impressions Gray’s footprints would make at Spindletop.

Having been in the education field for years as an EFL/ESL teacher in South Korea and a youth advocate in Chicago before pursuing museum studies, finding interactive programming that works with kids came easy to Gray.

“One of the things that I did develop was a program that we could take to schools (and libraries) called ‘Children on the Oilfield.’ That was very successful. I go there with things that the children can touch and do and talk about what did children on the oilfield do, the employment of children at the time, and their culture and the toys they played with – just what did the children see. The children love it, because of course they get their hands on things like Game of Graces that they have no idea about until they’re introduced,” he said.

Another successful program initiative was born out of the COVID pandemic.

“Coffee and Spindletop was an online program that the audience can ask questions to different people around the United States that have some sort of relationship to the history of the museum. So, we did the author Judy Linsley (CHECK) who wrote the book “Giant Under the Hill;” we also interviewed the curator of the National Barber Museum. We also interviewed an oil memorabilia collector – that was lot of fun. It really brought out different aspects and was a really good program,” Gray said.

And then there were traditional holiday events that were revived – like the Halloween trick-or-treat program and Christmas in Boomtown.

Gray brought back both but made them better.

Related: Spindletop Museum lights up for holidays

“I brought the Lamar students to help with games” at the Halloween event, and “Christmas in Boomtown – is now a month-long event, and we change the museum hours. Last year, that brought more people and revenue in December, so that’s how we know it did great. We have the scenery here, and it’s just very beautiful – it takes a lot of work, but it’s a great time,” Gray said.

In the pre-pandemic years, getting Lamar University students more involved was a goal of Gray’s, and though it’s been on hiatus since 2020, he’s hoping that relationship will renew in the coming year.

Gray also started other events – ones that extended beyond the yearly anniversary celebrations complete with re-enactors who added timely color to the festivities in between staged shoot-outs on the grounds outside the saloon.

Last year, he did a Country Life Festival, “which hopefully will be expanded into a really good fundraiser,” Gray said.

“Another fundraiser we did was called The Black Gold Bash, and again hopefully that will expand, as well. That’s some of the things I wanted to do was build fundraisers,” Gray said. 

That wasn’t something Gray could do solo – he needed a good board to back good ideas, but also bring new ones.

“When I arrived, (the advisory council) were dedicated, but there weren’t a lot of movers in the community on it.  And that was a success – that I connected to different business people and the Chamber of Commerce – they were represented. The advisory council went from a group of people that really liked the story of  Spindletop to people who really wanted the museum to move and to do things,” Gray said.

He added, “Some of the original members are still with us and that’s great, and then some of the newer and younger members that have joined us have brought in other ideas. One of the ones I remembers is the wine and jazz nights – that really came from some of the younger members.”

Gray also started the museum membership.

“When I came in, there were signs of building sponsorship, but nobody gave money or volunteered. Now we have about 2 sponsors for each building, and as far as museum members, it’s still growing, but we probably have about 30 to 35 members. But that brings in really needed money to the museum to allow us to do construction projects and programs and events that are very needed,“ he said, adding, ”and now the next person has these in place.”

And now, the next director won’t have to think so much about construction and renovation.

Related: Spindletop Museum renovations nearly complete

“That was another great success – not mine alone,” Gray said. “We have a really great advisory council and a person at Lamar helping me find money. But in the last 2 years, to raise $450,000, to redo the wood on the buildings and put on the heating cooling units in each of the buildings. Then we recently got new fencing. At the start of the year, they’ll be finishing that project – some buildings still need new wood, and there are pieces falling off some of the derricks, so they’re going to replace that wood, and there’s some painting that will be done,” Gray said.

All that work should be finished shortly after the new year, allowing Gray’s successor “to concentrate really on the events and the connections to Lamar,” he said.

Those are the next hurdles to be cleared.

“There’s many university museums and history museums, but this is kind of interesting, because it’s a village. In 2026, it’s the 150th anniversary of Spindletop, but more importantly it’s the 50th anniversary of the museum, so that’s a big thing. Lamar’s mission ties to education. I think there’s many different possibilities of connecting the students here.  When I came in the thought was use this as a laboratory for some kind of (museum studies) certificate program or public history program. That just never came to be, but that still should be a goal,” Gray said.

Alongside that, a continued push for public support of Spindletop is still necessary.

“It is a very important site, and I’m proud of all the things that I’ve done, but that needs to be continued. It needs to have more volunteers and support of people going to the events,” he said.

Related: Museum adds jazz and wine nights to event list

He noted the museum draws a lot of retired oil people, “and they are very proud of what they did. And we love to hear whenever the oil people come in, what kind of companies did you work for, and it’s usually more than one. And they have traveled the United States working in the oil industry, and they’re very proud of what they did. And even in the present, we have met someone the other day that is here working until February and hopes to stay on, and he’s very proud of what he does.”

He noted that museums in the Golden Triangle bring in people from all over the world, and “we have seen somebody now from every state since I’ve been here. Rhode Island was the last one. I kept waiting for somebody from Rhode Island to come, and finally, last fall Rhode Island came.”

Gray’s advice to the next director is simple —  “Just don’t worry when things go bad. Keep working day by day for your goals, because not everything happens at once.”

That’s a lesson Gray knows well and will be taking with him to build a better Bush Family Home museum experience.

“There definitely was lot of growth (here). Being in charge really teaches you a lot – everything that happens falls on your shoulders – whether you did it or not, it falls on your shoulders,” Gray said. “When there’s a storm that happens, not only do you have to worry about your own personal safety, but you also have the museum to take care of.”

After all, Spindletop was his 40-year-old baby, and he wasn’t about to drop it.

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As far as running the museum, Gray said, “I’ve learned so much about working with staff and with the public and with the board that I didn’t know before. I mean I knew a little of that, but this really put me in the middle of it. It really did (make me better and more well-rounded) as a museum director.“

And those are lessons he will take with him on his museum journey, which in an ideal world will one day land him as director of a presidential library.

But like the Bush’s, Gray will never forget the modestly meaningful lessons that led him down the path on which he now travels.

He will miss the people here in the Southeast Texas community and museum community of which he’s become a part.

But one of the things he’ll miss most is being a kind of Spindletop version of the Emerald City Wizard – the man behind the scenes with the magic key to signal the gusher’s grandiose spray.

“I’ll be missing the gusher,” Gray said.

kbrent@beaumontenterprise.com

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