From humble beginnings in a small eastern Oklahoma town called Holdenville, T. Boone Pickens was once depicted as pursuing the impossible. According to The Dallas Morning News' archival coverage of Pickens in 1983, he described how at age 12 he delivered newspapers and realized there was "potential to expand" while earning increasing profit. At the time, young Pickens made 12 cents a day. During the interview, Pickens stated this was an "early introduction to capitalism" that would mold him into a legendary business tycoon.
The one-time underdog also declared, “If you’re on the right side of the issue, just keep driving until you hear glass breaking. Don’t quit.”
Quit, he did not. He also believed in doing things by the book.
"Play by the rules. It's no fun if you cheat."
Pickens was happy as the unlikely underdog playing by the rules. He scoffed at Cities Service Co. for believing him to be pursuing an "impossible dream" as he stated in an interview with staff writer Polly Ross Hughes in 1982. Notorious for his brash and no-nonsense approach within the business world, Pickens was a force to be reckoned with. Cities Service compared him to David challenging Goliath. He appreciated the challenge and came out on top.
As well as being known as a shrewd businessman, Pickens earned a reputation as an outdoorsman. The paperboy-turned-entrepreneur was especially fond of bird hunting, as The Dallas Morning News' own Ray Sasser -- Pickens' hunting buddy -- could attest. "I had a single shot .410, and I got six doves that first hunt. The limit in those days was 10," Pickens told Sasser in 2010. Pickens was describing his first trip in 1940, walking the hills of Oklahoma with his father.
At the time, Pickens’ dream was to rise to the ranks of Volley Biddy, a quail hunter who was known as somewhat of a legend around his native Hughes County, Oklahoma. "I thought that was a pretty good way to make a living," recalled Pickens, "but my dad suggested I raise my sights a little higher.”
Forty years later, Pickens' economic foes found themselves in the crosshairs. As founder of Mesa Petroleum, Pickens oversaw numerous hostile takeovers, both successful and failed. His aggressive business tactics and brusque manner raised the eyebrows and ire of politicians, shareholders, and laypeople alike. Mesa's attempted takeover of Phillips Petroleum in 1984 inspired a student protest, "Boonebuster" T-shirts, and the last verse of a little known tune titled The Ballad of Frank and Jane.
On the steps of the Bartlesville courthouse, the hometown of Phillips Petroleum, composer and Perkins-opponent Dale Smith debuted this last verse during a dedication ceremony, encouraging listeners to finish the song "with any ending word or phrase they deemed appropriate, as long as it rhymed:
'Then along came another man/ T. Boone was his name/He had a reputation/In the money-making game/He says he’ll come to Bartlesville/And make everybody rich/That sounds like something you might hear/ From a lying ... geologist.'"
Regardless of how listeners chose to end that last verse, Pickens is remembered as a plain but direct speaker, a prodigious benefactor, and a cunning economic strategist who helped define an era of American entrepreneurialism.
To read more about the legacy of the late T. Boone Pickens, subscribe to The Dallas News Archives at archives.dallasnews.com.
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