Transcript
Introduction
"In 1978, Monty Moncrief was 84 years old. He was still very much the patriarch of his clan, the man who made the decisions in his family and in his family's business. Family and business were, in fact, the same thing with him, the desire to found the one being inseparably tied to the desire to found the other.
When speaking of his business, he never mentioned himself specifically. He would always say, 'We signed this deal. We figured out what was best. This is a we kind of business,' he explained. 'We don't tolerate any of that I stuff around here.' In Texas, in the oil business, one sees, as nowhere else, that the ideal of capitalism is the ideal of founding a family and conferring the right of inheritance upon it, passing a legacy on.
'We're oilmen,' Monty Moncrief would answer when asked about ranching or about real estate or about anything else. We're oilmen meant that anything which extended beyond the realm of oil was not a proper Moncrief concern. 'We're 100% family-owned, unincorporated and independent, and we intend to stay that way.'