The legendary T. Boone Pickens shares his wealth for the good of others.

by Scott Murray

“I never threw a ‘Hail Mary’ pass like Roger (Staubach),” said billionaire T. Boone Pickens. “But, I’ve had a fabulous life.” And it’s not over yet. “I have no intention of retiring. I won’t do that. Somebody said, ‘Will you slow down, and I said, ‘slow down? I don’t know what that means.’ Whether you can run the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds or it takes you 12 seconds, you’re still running the 100-yard dash.”

Pickens is clearly still in the game. It’s not uncommon to find him addressing a group at a 7 a.m. breakfast in Long Island, New York, rushing off to Tulsa, Oklahoma for an early afternoon speech, and finally back to his home in Dallas for a black tie fundraising gala the same evening. Not bad for a man less than 20 months shy of celebrating his 80th birthday.

T. Boone Pickens was born in the little town of Holdenville, Oklahoma, a year before the Great Stock Market Crash of ‘29. His family would later move to Amarillo, Texas. He recalls three adults who made a lasting impression during his formative years, starting in grade school with a teacher who happened to be his aunt. “She would never give me an A. I complained to my mother, who was her sister, and she told my mother, ‘when he comes up to his full potential, I’ll give him an A.’” Next was a high school basketball coach when he was 16. “T.G. Hooke was a man of few words,” said Pickens. “I was scared to death of him for the right reasons. He came at a time I needed him.”

The third influential figure was from his college years. Pickens began his studies at Texas A&M, then transferred to what is now Oklahoma State University, where he would graduate with a degree in Geology in 1951. “As I progressed, the dean of the Geology School at Oklahoma State also made a difference in my life. It was the first semester of my junior year and I went to Dr. Monet’s office. I asked him if it was pretty easy now to get a job as a geologist. I was trying to say something that would sound profound. He said, ‘Pickens, they’re not hiring the good boys now.’ I thought, ‘whoa.’ But it was the challenge I needed. I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to show you.’ There were about 25 in my graduating class and there were only four of us who got jobs. Monet really came along at the right time. What he said really didn’t hurt my feelings, but it did cause me to dig in and start grinding.”

Following graduation Pickens joined Phillips Petroleum, where he remained until 1954, when he abruptly quit one day. “I was in the office and they promoted me and said I was going to the Panhandle and serve as chief assistant and build a well within a year. I said I couldn’t do that, and they said, ‘why’,” Pickens recalls. “I said ‘I won’t be here.’ They told me I was up for a raise. ‘We’ll double your salary.’ I said ‘I think I’ll just quit today.’ I took my box of stuff I’d collected from my desk and rode the bus home. As I walked in the door, my wife said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘I quit. Remember last night I was complaining about the office and you said if I didn’t like it why don’t you quit? I just took your advice. We’re on our own.’ All we had was $1,500 in a Phillips savings plan.”

During the next two years, that would all begin to change. With an investment of a mere $2,500, Pickens formed Mesa Petroleum. And, over the next three decades, it would become the largest independent oil company in America. What has made T. Boone Pickens such a success? “Number one, I’m a hard worker. Number two, I am really blessed with an unbelievable memory. If I get my fingers smashed in a door, I damn sure won’t go back to the same door again,” Pickens says jokingly. “I notice that the harder I work, the luckier I get. My tax man told me that I have paid 90 percent of all my taxes since I was 70 years old.”

The decade of the ‘80s was a time of mergers and acquisitions for Pickens. His much-publicized oil and gas deals tossed him into the national spotlight, as he even appeared on the cover of Time in 1985. The decade of the ‘90s was quite the opposite. “I called it the Dark Decade. I struggled through the ‘90s as far as making money goes. I didn’t strike out or anything, but it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t a good period, but, I think it was a good experience in that I saw things could be better, and I came out of the ‘90s with a different attitude about a lot of things.”

In recent years, he’s sunk millions into the water aquifer project in the Texas Panhandle and is founder of the Clear Energy Company, pushing natural gas as an alternative to gasoline.

Philanthropy was something Boone learned about at an early age. “I didn’t have a lot of money. I remember the first time I made a donation it was $300. It was a big deal. I remember after committing the money, I wasn’t sure if I had it. But, it seemed like every time I gave money I made more. You honestly do. Now we look for good places to put money. We investigate where it’s going, then follow the money. We look to see what the money did, and if it did well, we give more money,” said Pickens proudly.

In recent years, Pickens has become nationally known for his generosity, having donated a reported half a billion dollars to philanthropic causes in his lifetime. Pickens and his employees at BP Capital gave $7 million to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Pickens was ranked the fifth-largest charitable giver last year, due mainly to his generous gift of $165 million to Oklahoma State University. That comes on the heels of a $70 million donation to OSU in 2003. “I don’t want to leave a hell of a lot of money,” says Pickens, "for somebody else to have the pleasure of placing and I never knew what happened to it. You always want to get rid of money, for one, and, two, you want it to sure be placed well. And, three, you want to see the results before you're not here any longer."

To read the rest of this story about T. Boone Pickens and to see the other related photograph, please get your copy of Volume 11, Issue 4, of Philanthropy World Magazine.