By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Robert Lee Clay Sr., 59, a prominent Maryland contractor who founded two organizations for minority contractors, was found dead of a gunshot wound May 16 at his office in Baltimore.
The Maryland medical examiner's office said the manner of death is under investigation.
Mr. Clay, a resident of Laurel and son of a backhoe operator, built a company that won excavation contracts for parts of the Baltimore subway system and the Fort McHenry Tunnel, which carries Interstate 95 under Baltimore Harbor.
Controversy dogged him. He was twice the subject of criminal charges. In 1976, he was acquitted of wounding a man who had visited his estranged wife. In 1980, Mr. Clay and one of his brothers were charged with murder after an altercation with a neighbor in his driveway, which ended with one man dead and another critically wounded. That case was dropped after a key witness changed his story.
He ran for state Senate in 1994, spending $100,000 of his own money. It was a nasty race, with opponents trading near-slanderous charges about personal behavior. After coming in fourth, Mr. Clay sued to have the election overturned, but that suit also was unsuccessful.
His firm, Robert Clay Inc., reaped millions in government contracts set aside for minority-owned businesses, and Mr. Clay immersed himself in local and state politics, bankrolling a generation of Democratic candidates, according to a 1999 profile in the Baltimore Sun. But his opposition could be as fierce as his loyalty. He recently caused a stir at Baltimore City Hall after he distributed a flier attacking the leadership of Mayor Martin O'Malley, particularly on minority business policies.
In 1999, he claimed to have intercepted racist leaflets, purportedly from a previously and subsequently unknown white supremacist group, that backed O'Malley's mayoral candidacy; he made thousands of copies and distributed them on Baltimore streets.
Mr. Clay sued and was sued numerous times over the years regarding contracts lost, bills unpaid and businesses that went bust.
He was appointed in 2003 to the Maryland Commission on Minority Enterprise Reform. He was founder of the Maryland Minority Contractors Association and later the Maryland Metropolitan Minority Contractors Association.
Mr. Clay was born in Wilson, N.C., and graduated from a contract education program at Anne Arundel Community College in 1984. He was a member of First Baptist Church of Savage-Guilford and a lifetime member of the NAACP.
His marriage to Virginia Mott Clay ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 25 years, Gerietta Clay of Laurel; three children from the first marriage, Robert L. Clay Jr., Sharon M. Clay and Eyvonne Clay, all of Baltimore; two daughters from the second marriage, Marcia S. Lavine of Baltimore and Alexandria Clay of Laurel; a stepdaughter, Raeisha I. Clay of Baltimore; two brothers, Raymond Clay Jr. of Laurel and Roger C. Clay of Baltimore; and two sisters, Lucille L. Harris of Laurel and Lula Belle Hawkins of Columbia.
