Top Philanthropic Donors: Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr.

Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr. was born May 22, 1928, known as T. Boone Pickens, is an American business magnate and financier. Pickens chairs the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator and corporate raider during the 1980s. With an estimated current net worth of about $1.4 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the 328th-richest person in America and ranked 879th in the world.

Pickens was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma, the son of Grace and Thomas Boone Pickens. His father worked as an oil and mineral landman (rights leaser). During World War II, his mother ran the local Office of Price Administration, rationing gasoline and other goods in three counties.  Pickens was the first child born via Caesarean section in the history of Holdenville hospital.

At age 12, Pickens delivered newspapers. He quickly expanded his paper route from 28 papers to 156. Pickens later cited his boyhood job as an early introduction to "expanding quickly by acquisition," a business practice he favored later in life.

When the oil boom in Oklahoma ended in the late 1930s, Pickens' family moved to Amarillo, Texas. Pickens never served in the military but instead attended Texas A&M on a basketball scholarship, but he lost the scholarship and transferred to Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University), where he majored in Geology. He is a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. He graduated from Oklahoma A&M with a degree in geology in 1951. Following his graduation, Pickens was employed by Phillips Petroleum. He worked for Phillips until 1954.  In 1956, following his period as a wildcatter, he founded the company that would later become Mesa Petroleum.

Mr. Pickens, now 82, pledged $100-million to Oklahoma State University, in Stillwater, to endow scholarships that will be awarded based on academic merit and to provide financial aid for students who otherwise could not afford to attend. The institution will receive the money upon Mr. Pickens’s death.

A 1951 graduate of the university, Mr. Pickens has made numerous other donations to Oklahoma State. Counting this pledge, he has committed close to $500-million to the institution over his lifetime.

In addition to his pledge to Oklahoma State in 2010, Mr. Pickens gave a total of $1,046,512 to 30 human-service, medical, public-affairs, and other groups throughout the country.

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