EL DORADO — Claiborne Deming, former president and chief executive officer of Murphy Oil Corp., went through what he believes are the essentials for a growing town during the Kiwanis Club meeting on Wednesday.
Deming graduated from Tulane University, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in 1976. In 1979, he received a JD from Tulane University Law School. After graduation, began working as an attorney for Murphy Oil. A decade later, in 1989, he was promoted to president of Murphy Oil USA, its U.S.-based subsidiary.
He retired in 2008 and has since served as chairman of the Murphy board and also as a senior advisor to TPH partners, an energy private equity firm.
The first topic Deming discussed were jobs and how El Dorado has the resources to excel in them. El Dorado is home to the offices of three New York Stock Exchange trade in companies, he said. “With a town of 19,000 people in the rural south, that is really unique,” Deming said. “It might be unique of any town less than 25,000 people in America.”
He stated that a town needs blue collar jobs and white collar jobs to function. “You need to have professional jobs and service jobs in a community,” he said. “There’s a fair number of jobs here and they’re good jobs.”
Union County has a high percentage of manufacturing jobs compared to the national average. “With those advantages, we have lost population,” Deming said. “So it struck me, there are other things you need to make a city dynamic, grow and be successful.”
He believes the entrepreneurship side of El Dorado could be better approached. “We’re good at running and growing companies,” he said. “We’re not as good at starting up businesses and the risk taking part.”
He thinks that El Dorado should be good at this because the city witnessed companies start and become very successful.
The second issue Deming talked about was the safety of El Dorado. “And I think we score pretty high on that,” Deming said. “If you just follow the normal rules of common sense, I feel that we live in a very safe community, and I give kudos to police officers, fire department and emergency responders.”
Third, Deming discussed the entertainment and lifestyle feel in El Dorado. This topic was not as important in the past, but it’s really important now, he said. “Right now we’re not very good at that,” Deming said. “But we’re soon going to be really good at that.
“When Festivals and Events gets started, which looks like it’s going to be September, we’re going to be really extraordinary, like best in class in our part of the world and in our size,” he said.
He believes the Festivals and Events organization is going to bring people and keep them in El Dorado.
Next, he talked about the medical access and care in the El Dorado community. Deming considers himself lucky and does not have to see a doctor often. “So mine is just observational,” he said. “We’ve got hospitals and plenty of doctors. My observation is that it’s pretty good.”
Deming talked very passionately about the look and curbside appeal of El Dorado. He described the downtown area as “killer good” and said that when he worked at Murphy Corp., past and present, visitors always commend the downtown area.
Deming did comment on one thing he thinks the city could improve on. “One thing that I’ve noticed is that there is a proliferation of trash and litter all around this town,” Deming said. “There are some things we have no control on, but this one is something that we have complete control over.”
He also said he is very excited about what the Keep El Dorado Beautiful organization is doing, but everyone in the community should be helping as well. “I think that helps the curbside appeal,” he said. “A town that is littered with trash, it looks like it’s a city in decline.”
Deming believes this is a problem that could easily be solved.
The last topic, and most important in his opinion, was education. He said that cities with good school districts attract parents. “A great school system that prepares you for a university or college is becoming really important,” Deming said. “When I first got involved in education here about 25 years ago, we had four advanced placement classes in high school. Now we have almost 20.”
He believes that this is one thing the El Dorado Promise is helping with. 80 percent of graduates from El Dorado High School are now going to college. That’s competitive with almost every high school in America, he said.
He described education as a recruiting tool for bringing more people to El Dorado. “If you have the rigor and that academic feel, and then you have the El Dorado Promise, put that together and then you have this beautiful high school, the ingredients are there.” he said. “Lets take it up to the next level and I think that would make a difference here.”
Deming has always considered “small southern towns” as the best places to live in the world. “The culture, the people, the pace of life, the integrity and just who we are makes southern towns, I think, uniquely appealing to the world,” Deming said.
Next Wednesday, Jan Steward of Union County Master Gardeners, will be the guest speaker when the Kiwanis Club meets.
Kaitlyn Rigdon may be reached by email, [email protected].