b'Clara Driscoll late in her life; Dr. McIver Furman who established Driscoll Childrens Hospital. Clara was the only one of the Corpus Christi owners of the Plaza who refused to sell to White, and she took her case to court where she lost. Upon clearing out her penthouse atop the hotel, she vowed to build a bigger one next door from which she could spit (in the polite version of the tale) upon the White Plaza. It took a few years, but in May 1942, the eighteen-story Robert Driscoll Hotel opened next door to the property she then loathed.Looming four stories taller than the White Plaza, the Driscoll Hotel was more lavish and grander in every respect, including Claras new penthouse that occu-pied the entire rooftop, complete with twelve bathrooms. And yes, depending on the direction of the wind, Clara could easily spit upon the White Plaza Hotel. Today, the former Robert Driscoll Hotel is the main tower of Wells Fargo Plaza.In the decade before, in which the Driscoll fortune grew to immense propor-tions thanks to the discovery of vast oil and natural gas reserves on her land, the Seviers took two years away from Texas. Hal Sevier was appointed United States Ambassador to Chile in 1933, where the couple lived during his service until 1935. Upon their return, they became legally separated, and were divorced in 1937 after thirty-one years of marriage in which they had no children. Clara dropped her married name and would be known as Mrs. Clara Driscoll for the remainder of her life.Clara Driscoll put to work her lifetime of close political connections to the Dem-ocratic Party, including her influence within the FDR Administration, to promote the establishment of Naval Air Station Corpus Christi on the Encinal Peninsula at the northern end of Flour Bluff. Starting in the mid-1930s, she allied with Rep. Lyndon Baines Johnson, Rep. John Nance Garner, Rep. Richard M. Kleberg and Corpus Christi Mayor Roy Miller, who led the successful bid to build the Port of Corpus Christi with Robert Driscoll, Jr., to win the base for South Texas. In 1938, the 75th Congress approved construction of the NAS, FDR personally signing the contract to build the base with Houston builder Brown and Root.Naval Air Station Corpus Christi was christened in May 1941, just in time for the threat of war that would unfold by the end of that year. More than 35,000 Naval 72 THE COASTAL BEND GUIDE TheCoastalBend.com'