Robert E. "Bob" Thomas
July 14, 1914 ----- December 3, 2015
It is 1924 in the small town of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. No one can yet know or imagine that the tall, skinny 10-year-old hauling a red wagon-load of Saturday Evening Post magazines behind his bicycle will one day build an energy company from whole cloth, providing opportunities and well-paying jobs to thousands en route to becoming a multibillion-dollar, enterprise.
Nor can the folks in Cuyahoga Falls possibly know that Robert E. "Bob" Thomas will be both reviled by the press (described by a St. Louis newspaper editorial as the "master criminal mind" behind the overnight transfer of an entire railroad headquarters) and nationally recognized years later as one of the great energy entrepreneurs of his time.
In nearby Akron, the lad becomes a super salesman and deadbolt-reliable distributor of the popular magazine. Saving his rising profits, he buys out the other two Saturday Evening Post routes there, services them himself, wins a national award, and travels expense-paid to Philadelphia. "Two days in the biggest city I had ever seen," he vividly recalled in a 2014 interview on the eve of his 100th birthday.
The son of Talbott and Jane Thomas was given a tour of "mahogany row" at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, where his father was career-long accountant. Viewing the executive offices left an indelible impression on the young boy, not so much for the polished mahogany desks, but more for the power and the perks he imagined accompanied them.
Starting out at 10 cents an hour, he worked at a stationery store in his hometown for two years after high-school graduation, expanding his duties and his earnings, saving the pay, and pondering his future. He applied to the world-renown Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and was admitted. "To my immense surprise," he said decades later, still delighted.


Whizzing Through Wharton
Bob Thomas was a whiz kid at Wharton, completing the four-year coursework in three while serving as an accountant and occasional dealmaker for companies owned by his uncle, Ray Eggleston. "Uncle Ray" introduced him to the finer things of life, including yachting, to which Bob later would devote much of his rare free-time as an energy executive. "My business challenges and concerns evaporated on the open sea," he said, adding that his last yacht was capable of covering 1,800 nautical miles without refueling its huge diesel tanks. Past the 100-year mark, he could still recite that custom-built craft's exact specifications by heart.
Speaking of the heart, a troubling murmur was detected by a physician associated with the University of Pennsylvania's rowing team, eliminating an extracurricular activity Bob wanted to somehow squeeze into his jam-packed schedule. He gave up smoking after college, and the murmur was never heard again.
Running The Katy
The long arm of coincidence -- some would call it fate -- reached out several times in the Ohio native's unlikely pathway to the creation of the Mid-America Pipeline Company (which officially became MAPCO when first traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1966). With his Wharton School of Business diploma in hand, Bob took the first offer that met his "salary requirement" of $200 a month -- a heady amount during the Great Depression. Hired by a fellow Wharton grad, he initially served as the assistant general manager of Keystone Custodian Funds in Philadelphia. Two years later he took his first airplane ride when the company moved to Boston in 1938.
During his 17 years with Keystone, Bob became nationally recognized for his financial analysis of railroad companies and knew the chief executive officer of every major railroad in the country. Pennroad Corporation, another investment house, offered him "well over" $50,000 a year, plus bonus, to come aboard in 1953 and "do something with" its railroad holdings. Following the death of a Florida man, who owned 75 percent of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas (Katy) Railroad stock, Pennroad and State Street bought that bloc of stock, which had been painstakingly located in more than 100 different brokerage houses. And Bob found himself "running the Katy show" as executive committee chairman of its board of directors.
Getting the Katy back to financial health was job one. One of Bob's early decisions involved consolidating the railroad company's accounting offices to reduce costs and increase efficiency, but he ran into a union problem in Kansas. "The union stopped us with half of the equipment on the train (headed for Texas) and the other half on the platform," Bob recalled.
Undeterred, he ordered that the Katy headquarters in St. Louis be moved on a Saturday night, a week ahead of schedule, via 20 moving vans. Employees showing up for work that Monday at the barren offices were invited by posted notice to get on a Katy train the next day bound for Denison, Texas, if they wished to continue their employment. A St. Louis newspaper editorial described Thomas as the "master criminal mind" behind the move. "I took it as a compliment at the time," he said, describing the Katy as a "financially troubled railroad" that required bold, swift actions.
Rubbing Elbows With Sam and LBJ
With rumor of a Congressional investigation brewing, however, Bob reached out for help from a fishing buddy, who headed the Texas Democratic Party. Three days later, Bob was in Washington, D.C., for some meetings arranged by his friend with two other Texans. He met first with House Speaker Sam Rayburn and then with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson. At the close of the meetings, Thomas recalled, LBJ escorted him out of an office in the bowels of the Senate building and drawled: "Bob, don't worry about all this. Sam and I will straighten it out." Ten days later, terms were laid out for the Katy Railroad to avoid the investigation.
(For years, Bob threw a birthday party for Sam Rayburn. When "Mister Sam" died in 1961, President John F. Kennedy, former presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman, and Vice President Johnson attended the funeral services in Texas. Bob provided a private railcar to bring Truman and his wife, Bess, from near their Independence, Missouri, home to the services and checked to make sure they had everything they wished on the trip, which included a round of bourbon with Bob.)
In 1957 that previously mentioned long arm of coincidence would lure Bob Thomas away from his Pennroad/Katy Railroad obligations, trigger a move from New York to Tulsa, and open the door to what he would later describe as "the most enjoyable" period of his remarkably long business life.
A Fascinating Idea
A worldwide, Tulsa-based pipeline-construction company now simply called Williams had been trying, without success, to persuade a railroad company to buy into its unique idea of building a cross-country pipeline that would transport liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) products from source wells in Texas and New Mexico to demand areas for butane and propane as far northeast as Albany, New York. The idea was simple: replace your expensive and relatively inefficient tanker railcars with the proposed pipeline. Unlike product in a railcar, product in a pipeline is fungible, not unlike cash in a bank.
The chairman of the Missouri-Pacific Railroad wasn't interested, but over lunch in New York City he passed along the Williams idea to Bob, who was fascinated. "I knew this about pipelines: If they were successful, they were real money makers," Thomas recalled. He telephoned Bill Warren, a member of the Katy Railroad board of directors and head of Warren Petroleum, whose businesses included propane. Encouraged by Warren to "look into it," Bob met with John Williams, co-founder of the modern-day Williams Companies. During meetings of these two men, plans were sketched out for the nation's first long-distance LPG pipeline. The pipeline's proposed route changed, still originating in Texas and New Mexico but now going up through the Heartland as far north as Minnesota and Wisconsin. Propane and Butane transported by the new pipeline would be used to dry corn, fuel farm machinery, and heat homes and businesses.
Making It Happen
Over nearly three years of planning and work, the $72 million in financing was secured and shipper "letters of intent" were in hand from 13 different companies, the last and most critical being Skelly Oil, founded in Tulsa five years after Bob was born in 1914. "That one put us over the top. Some people around Tulsa gave our enterprise about as much chance as a snowball in hell," Bob said. He noted that he chose Tulsa as the headquarters because most of the shippers were here, strong friendships were made here, and simply for the fact that "Tulsa had trees."
Williams began building the LPG pipeline a full month before the financing had been completed. The 2,175-mile Mid-America Pipeline Company system went into service a mere nine months later on December 8, 1960 -- reflecting a record-breaking construction pace. And the propane and butane dealers loved the new service provided by the pipeline. Previously, they had waited for the LPG in this or that railcar to arrive. Now they got it virtually instantaneously when they placed the orders.
For years, Bob would tell the story of a previously frustrated propane dealer who had ordered a total of six railcars over a three-month period. The first railcar was a month late, the third one was a month early, and all six arrived on the same day. No wonder they loved the MAPCO pipeline.
In two years, shipments had quadrupled and MAPCO was profitable. But there was a problem yet to be solved: roughly 80 percent of the earnings arrived in the first and fourth quarters, during cold weather. Over a period of years, Bob Thomas and his leadership team increased, broadened and evened out the earnings by adding oil production, coal mining, fertilizer, retail sales, and natural gas and natural gas liquids to MAPCO's portfolio of businesses. In its expanded LPG business, it made money from one end of the pipeline to the other and all along the way.
A 'Great Feeling of Satisfaction'
Asked if he could recall a favorite time in his storied business career, he replied: "Basically, the period I went through in founding MAPCO covered three or four years. It was a time when I didn't know for sure that I was going to be successful, but I kept working at it. Those years were probably the most rewarding because I received this great feeling of satisfaction when it all came together ... when it succeeded."
He spoke matter-of-factly about leadership and entrepreneurship. "I think you are born with it." On growing MAPCO, he said: "I could always raise the dough. I told the various heads of our divisions that whenever we found a deal that looked attractive, I could get the money for it -- and I did. Also, and this is a key point, I let our people pretty much run their own show. As long as they were doing a good job and producing the earning that I expected, why should I attempt to change anything?"
Invited to speak at his alma mater, he earlier had told the Wharton School of Business students that "entrepreneurs are born, not educated." He said the remark "upset the professors at Wharton, but those were my feelings. And they still invited me back. And I still believe what I told them."
The Energy Advocate
In response to the oil-embargo crises of the 1970s and while still running MAPCO's growing operations, Bob Thomas went on a multiyear speaking tour as an advocate for a sensible, long-term national energy policy regarding production and conservation. He came across to the audiences as deeply knowledgeable and direct, perhaps to the point of being abrasive -- which bothered him not a whit. Today, some talking-head pundits might have described his talks as "politically incorrect." And Bob undoubtedly would have taken that as a compliment.
Here is a Wall Street Journal excerpt from one of his speeches, circa 1975: "The corporation today is largely defenseless -- a nice, big, fat juicy target for every ambitious politician and a most convenient scapegoat for every variety of discontent." In this same speech, he predicted "lower business activity, lower standards of living, lower employment and other unpleasant consequences unless some drastic changes occur, unless Congressmen from the heavy oil-consuming states, in particular, stop playing games." (He would unapologetically stand by those words today, arguing that they rang true.)
At times, Bob Thomas seemed airborne as much as he was on terra firma, hop-scotching across the country on fist-tight schedules that would make a teenager wheeze. On a personal trip, he and wife Barbara were touching down on a Chicago runway in a converted World War II bomber when the brakes apparently failed, sending the plane skidding into Lake Michigan. Bob calmly helped Barbara out and onto a wing, grabbed his briefcase, and joined her and the crew as they swam toward shore. Near the shoreline, Barbara was helped onto a pontoon of a rescue helicopter. She saw Bob, still in the water, and watched as his appointment book drifted and bobbed away. She said not a word, fearing that Bob would risk his life to retrieve that "little black book." (Barbara Thomas died in 1991 at the age of 75.)
'Work Was Built Into Him'
Bob had served as founder, president, chief executive, and chairman of the board when he retired from MAPCO in 1984 at the age of 70. At that time, the company employed 7,000 men and women. Over his quarter-century of stewardship, an untold number had seen their standards of living dramatically improved, their ability to send their children to college enhanced, their future brighter because he had pursued, developed and brought to fruition an idea.
His only daughter, Barbara "Barbee" Thomas Kennedy, of Charlottesville, Virginia, accurately predicted years earlier that her father would stay on at MAPCO until at least 70 and that there would be no retirement per se. In a 2015 interview, she explained: "Work was built into him. Being an entrepreneur was pretty much a lot of him. He was driven. My father expected a lot from his people, but he also took good care of them." (A son, Robert E. "Bob" Thomas Jr., of Oceanside, California, died at age 64.)
In retirement, Bob "more actively focused" on oil and natural gas activities he originally had pursued in the 1940s and '50s. When MAPCO merged with Williams in a $3.1 billion stock deal in 1998, he moved his office to the 52-story Bank of Oklahoma tower, which Williams had built and uses as its headquarters. Ever the dealmaker, Bob had a "lifetime consultant" agreement, including an office and a personal assistant, with MAPCO that carried over with the Williams merger. Even after he crested the 100-year mark in 2014, Bob continued driving to his downtown office in his factory hot-rod BMW two or three days a week to look after working interests and royalties involving about 300 oil and gas wells, mostly in Kansas.
Serving The Community
The entrepreneur/businessman/oilman/philanthropist was a continual boon to the Tulsa community at large. He served as founder of the Energy Advocates, chairman of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, campaign chairman for the Tulsa United Way (reaching a record $5 million donation mark in the process), and chairman emeritus of the Tulsa Red Cross, where he spearheaded the fundraising for a badly needed new building, whose design and construction he insisted on overseeing before agreeing to lead the money-raising campaign.
Bob credited his wife, Jeanne Vinson Thomas, staying mentally active, reading voraciously, and sipping a couple of martinis a day for "keeping me going." He added, "I don't spend much time thinking what I can't do. I still look forward most of the time."
A lifelong conservative, he voiced his growing concern regarding this country's future. And in typical Bob Thomas style, he didn't mince words. "The future of this country, in my mind, is very dubious. We have a president who, without doubt in my mind, is the worst president of my lifetime. We need to strengthen our armed forces and gain a clear and concise leadership at the top level." He then expressed his deeply held appreciation and love for "this great country" and all it has opened to him and countless others.
Survivors include his wife, Jeanne Vinson Thomas of Tulsa; daughter, Barbara "Barbee" Thomas Kennedy and her husband, Brian Henry Kennedy, of Charlottesville, Virginia; sister, Marilyn Thomas Holder, of Punta Gorda, Florida; grandchildren Darcey Christina Kennedy of Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Kevin Michael Kennedy and his wife, Jennifer Wing Kennedy, of Decatur, Georgia, and their children, Anna Talbott Kennedy and Margaret Elizabeth Kennedy.
In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Tulsa Chapter American Red Cross, 10158 East 11th Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74128 or to Trinity Episcopal Church, 501 South Cincinnati, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74103. Memorial service will be 11:00 A.M., Monday, December 14, 2015, at Trinity Episcopal Church.