_PARA WPAR@`ÿÿÿÿÿÿ çTEXT` ÙDriscoll, Clara 1881Ð1945 clubwoman and philanthropist Born in St. MaryÕs, Texas, on April 2, 1881, Clara Driscoll was the daughter of a wealthy rancher and businessman. She was educated privately in Texas, New York City, and France. From about 1899 she was active in the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and she soon became interested in the fate of the remains of the fabled Alamo Mission in San Antonio. The ruins of the mission were then in private hands and virtually lost in the midst of a run-down commercial district. In 1903 she donated $75,000 to purchase the mission site for the state. In 1905 the Texas legislature appropriated a sum to repay her and conveyed the entire Alamo site, including the chapel adjacent the mission, which had belonged to the state since 1883, to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. The group split over the question of restoring or demolishing the remains of the mission, which had been the fortress and scene of the massacre of 1836; Driscoll favored clearing the area about the chapel to form a memorial park. The question was tested in court and in 1910 DriscollÕs plan was approved, and work on creating Alamo Plaza and Alamo Park was begun. Meanwhile she had attained a certain fame with two novels, The Girl of La Gloria, 1905, and In the Shadow of the Alamo, 1906, and with a musical comedy, Mexicans, which was successfully produced in New York City in 1906. In July 1906 she married Henry H. Sevier, a New York journalist formerly of Texas. They lived in New York until 1914, when they moved to Austin, Texas, where Henry Sevier founded the Austin American. In 1925 Clara Sevier was elected president of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. In addition to her work with several womenÕs clubs and her astute management of the vast Driscoll holdings (including the Corpus Christi Bank and Trust Company, of which she was president), she became active in Democratic politics as well, and in 1928 she was elected to the partyÕs national committee. During 1933Ð1936 she lived in Chile, where her husband was serving as U.S. ambassador. She divorced him in 1937 and resumed her maiden name. In 1940 she was co-manager of the John N. Garner favorite-son campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. In 1944 she headed a rump convention that split with the Texas Democratic organization to remain loyal to fourth-term candidate President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and her delegation won accreditation to the national convention. She was chosen a vice-chair of the national committee that year. During World War II she also headed the womenÕs war bond and stamp sales drive in Texas. She died in Corpus Christi, Texas, on July 17, 1945, and before burial her body lay in state in the Alamo chapel. Nstyl`!5ª5ª5ª8!I³ 5ª´!Iï!I!I!I*!IM!IU!IJ!IY!I] 5ª^!Ilink`