“Staying out of jail. That’s helpful.”
And, so, fabulously successful Denver oilman Cortlandt Dietler sums up the key to his many professional triumphs.
Dietler, 85, chosen by the National Western Stock Show as the 2007 Citizen of the West, has started, run and sold a bunch of oil businesses. He helped found Vail, owned ranches and sat – and still sits – on a raft of boards, from the Denver Art Museum to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo.
All of which means he lords over a dominion of bragging rights. And yet Dietler is an enormously modest man, crediting “luck” for his achievements.
“Good fortune gets you where you’re going, and I’ve had plenty of that,” Dietler says during an interview in a conference room in downtown Denver’s TransMontaigne Inc., the fuel storage and transport company he founded in 1995. “I’ve had the good fortune of having lots of people around me making me look good.”
But it’s not the smart people clustered around the man that the National Western is honoring.
The organization added Dietler to its pantheon – already inscribed with names like Vice President Dick Cheney, Sue Anschutz-Rodgers, William
Coors and many others – because Dietler “does truly reflect the modern-day pioneer of the West,” says Pat Grant, National Western president and CEO.
“He’s always blazing new trails,” Grant says. “He’s always pursued an innovative, entrepreneurial career in business and energy development.”
More to the point, though, is that Dietler’s character embodies the spirit of the West, Grant says. “He’s extremely blunt, he’s crusty, he’s directly forthright and occasionally jarring in his comments. All of which comes down to one simple word. He’s very honest. That captures the spirit of Cort.”
Chosen each year by a committee of community leaders, Citizen of the West is typically bestowed upon a person who best illustrates the “spirit and determination of the Western pioneer and who is committed to perpetuating those Western ethics.”
So what does the spirit of the West mean to Dietler?
“People came out here and built mines or ranches or whatever. The old boys needed more guts than sense, but they made it work, they did something that builds a community, a society,” Dietler says. “Their word was their bond, in large part. Everybody didn’t call a lawyer every time they blinked an eye. They were responsible for themselves. That’s the most useful thing we can learn.”
Dietler prefaces and punctuates many of his dry zingers with quick flashes of grin.
During the interview he announces, “I’m not a cowboy,” and in his brass-buttoned blue blazer, gray slacks, and a preppy striped tie, he doesn’t look like a guy who might favor bolo ties and cowboy boots.
He’s spent his years in the Colorado living not on a spread in Parker or Castle Pines, but in Denver’s Country Club neighborhood. “I don’t want to spend the whole damn day commuting,” he says.
A player behind the scenes
The man has been involved with more than 30 companies and has been a foundation to Denver’s business and philanthropic community – the new wing of the Denver Art Museum, for example, has a stirring Dietler Gallery of Western Art – but he’s rarely quoted in the media.
When asked about his accomplishments and his life during an hour-long interview, he quickly tossed off the wry, gut-busting one- liners for which he is known, and labored to deflect all attention away from the toil and skill that surely played a big role in his achievements. His friends, though, didn’t hesitate to pepper him with praise.
“He’s a great human being, and that’s how success is rated,” says former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., a longtime Dietler friend who was Citizen of the West in 1990. “He’s the most generous guy, with his time, his friendship, his treasure, his talent. He flies under the radar. He does things we’ll never find out about him.”
Simpson says he judges people based on how they would respond if he were saddled with a heavy heart. Dietler, he says, “is the guy you’d want to be sitting across from. He’d listen, he’d be humorous, self-effacing, but he’d give you wise, caring counsel. He’d let you understand that he personally cared about you and enjoyed you as a friend. These aren’t traits you often find in business. The heavy hitters like to crowd you out of the way, but this guy, he didn’t just put it in his back pocket. He gives.”
At the same time, Simpson says,
Dietler “never asked for a thing,” despite his extreme generosity with financial contributions to Republican causes and politicians, including Simpson.
The will to succeed
“I don’t remember him ever coming and saying, ‘I’ve got this or that problem.’ He was just interested in good government, and he supported people who would use common sense and not get caught in raw partisanship.”
Simpson and Cheney are, by all accounts, among Dietler’s closest friends. Another pal, Denver energy- industry banker Tom Petrie, says Dietler has been a “mentor” to many in the region’s business community.
“Each generation has its own cast of characters,” Petrie says. “I can’t say I see his equivalent in the current or my generation.
“He really is the best of what we find in the businessman. He enjoys work. He’s really the epitome of somebody who is a builder and who enjoys figuring out how to make things work,” Petrie says. “When you look at the companies he was involved with, whether it’s the early oil-gathering business or Associated Natural Gas Corp. or TransMontaigne, it’s figuring out where there’s a need and then building a company that can solve a problem.”
Dietler was born in Denver in 1921, moved to Tulsa when he was 10, served in the Army during World War II between 1942 and 1945, graduated from the University of Tulsa in 1947 and immediately commenced his career in the oil industry, taking a job with Trans-Arabian Pipeline Co. in Beirut.
From there, a few jobs followed, leading into a lifetime of starting his own businesses, most of them hinging on the transportation and storage of petroleum products.
“I couldn’t hold a job, so I decided I’d have to create my own,” he says. “It’s not glamorous, but it put meat and potatoes on the table.”
He’s admired in oil circles for his prescience – the man understood how to be in the right place at the right time – and for his unique leadership talents.
Dietler is no hectoring captain of industry. Instead of broadcasting fear among his employees and associates, his admirers say, he nurtured trust.
“Cort’s the kind of guy where he’d say, ‘OK everybody, we’re all going to jump off a cliff together.’ And everybody would hold hands and say, ‘Just tell us when,”‘ says Timothy Travis, who owns Denver-based Eaton Metal Products Co. “People will do anything for him. People just like to be around him.”
Given to giving
Which may explain, at least in part, his deep involvement with so many organizations. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science? A trustee. Denver Area Council, Boy Scouts of America? Past chairman and trustee emeritus. The University of Tulsa? Trustee emeritus. The list goes on.
Denver philanthropist Nancy Petry has known Dietler for decades, ever since her late husband, Nick, became a close friend of Dietler. She sits on the board of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center with Dietler, and said he brings sense and direction to the meetings.
“When Cort speaks, people listen, because he always comes right to the point,” she says. “He’s got a lot of wisdom and knowledge and experience that is invaluable to any board.”
She also said his advancing years have not chipped away at that which has consumed most of his life: his passion for work.
“He’s a workaholic, there’s no question about it,” she says. “He’s in that office every day. He tends the business, believe me. That’s his life. He’s dedicated to philanthropic work and community activity. He’s a one-man support system.”
For banker Tom Petrie, it doesn’t take much to remind him of his role model Dietler.
Outside of his office sits a bronze of two cowboys on horseback reaching across a fence and shaking hands. The piece is called “Binding Contracts.”
“Cort epitomizes that,” he says. “I think of Cort when I look at that.”
Corralling an honor
The 2007 National Western Stock Show opened Saturday and runs through Jan. 21 at the National Western complex, off Interstate 70 at the Brighton Boulevard or Coliseum exits. For show and admission information visit nationalwestern.com. Cortlandt Dietler will receive the
Citizen of the West award on Wednesday at a sold-out dinner at the Adam s Mark Hotel in Denver.
