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Barry Clifford Discovers Buried Treasure
(page 4 of 8)
At Trinidad Clifford roomed with another player named Rob McClung, a champion diver from Florida. The two of them became fast friends. The pair of McClung and Clifford took up skiing, mountain climbing, hiking, fishing, and hunting. "It was incredible," Clifford remembered. "Rob and I, when we were in Colorado, would just go off on these incredible adventures. We'd put .22 pistols in plastic bags and go down the Purgatory River on our backs. We'd shoot our lunch. I wasn't a great student but I had a lot of great times."
In summer Clifford and McClung returned to Cape Cod and took jobs as lifeguards at the public beach at Dennis. On the job Clifford had a favorite ploy. A skillful snorkler in the swirling waters off the Cape, sometimes he would kill a shark, attach it to a buoy and wait until the beach filled up with girls. "Then I would swim out with a knife between my teeth and thrash around with the shark." Back onshore, people were often terrified by the sight of such a maelstrom. But they also fiercely admired Barry Clifford.
After two years at Trinidad College, Clifford and McClung transferred to Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado, which Clifford said he picked for its proximity to Crested Butte, a prominent skiing area. Barry loved the ski slopes and the type of people attracted to them -- healthy outdoorsy types with money position, and influence. There he met some of the people who would later be instrumental in his quest to salvage the Whydah.
It was a very good time for Barry. He met a champion skier named Patti Smith, and they were married. It was 1969, and Vietnam was still festering in America's side. Clifford, a patriotic athlete, wanted to go serve his country. He passed the Navy flight exam, but flunked the physical when it was determined he was color-blind. Suddenly he was at a crossroads. He was too small to play pro football. He was a terrific skier with a degree in sociology "I had no idea what I was going to do with my life," he said. "All I knew was I was having a lot of fun and I didn't want it to stop."
So Barry Clifford came home to New England. His good looks, engaging manner, and athleticism helped him find decent jobs in the South Shore area -- first as a Boy Scout administrator; then as a high school physical education teacher. He fathered two children and his marriage dissolved after four years.
Barry wanted something more out of life than working for the Boy Scouts or coaching junior varsity football. It was the early 70s, and he began investing in real estate. He discovered that making money in that way was almost as easy as making tackles on the gridiron. "I began buying up land and building houses. Between 1971 and 1978 I built a million dollars' worth of property. Making money was never that difficult for me."
In 1974 Barry Clifford moved to Martha's Vineyard. For $40,000 he purchased a dilapidated warehouse next to the water. He restored it, laying 20,000 bricks by hand himself. A restaurant, the Beach Club, opened in his building. Playboy Magazine wrote favorably about it; the right sorts of Vineyard crowds began to drift into it, and into Barry Clifford's life.
He bought a house in West Tisbury, where Katharine Graham, who owns the Washington Post, became his neighbor. He cut deals in real estate. Professionally and socially Barry Clifford was in demand.
A tradition of sorts started when he began going to author William Styron's house on Thanksgiving Day. He mingled with people like John Belushi, James Taylor and Carly Simon, Mia Farrow, Robert McNamara and his family. The rich and famous talked to Barry as if he were their equal.
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