Tom Slick

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fsl07

SLICK, THOMAS BAKER, JR. (1916–1962). Thomas Baker Slick, Jr., oilman, rancher, philanthropist, and founder of the Southwest Research Institute and the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, was born at Clarion, Pennsylvania, on May 6, 1916, the son of Thomas Baker and Berenice (Frates) Slick. His father, one of the most famous independent oil operators in the Southwest, was known as "Lucky Tom" and "King of the Wildcatters." When Tom Slick, Sr., died in 1930 at the age of forty-six, he left his children approximately $15 million. Tom, Jr., used his wealth to support activity in a variety of fields, including scientific research, oil drilling, cattle breeding, exploration, and collections of modern art. When Slick was twelve, his family moved from San Antonio to Oklahoma City. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy from 1931 to 1934. In 1938 he earned a premedical degree in biology from Yale University, where he was a Phi Beta Kappa. He later took graduate courses at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During the first part of World War II he was a "dollar-a-year" man for the War Production Board in Washington and a cargo officer in Chile for the Board of Economic Warfare. He later served in the navy in the Pacific and Japan.

Slick established a number of research organizations, beginning in 1941 with the Foundation of Applied Research (now the Texas Biomedical Research Institute; see ARGYLE HOTEL). He also founded the Institute of Inventive Research (1944; liquidated 1953), designed to develop and promote the ideas of independent inventors; the Southwest Research Institute (1947); the Southwest Agricultural Institute (1957); the Mind Science Foundation (1958), which investigates the human mind; and the Human Progress Foundation (1960), was intended to promote better conditions through science, education, and the advancement of peace. The first three of these-the SFRE, IIR, and SR-became units of the Southwest Research Center, which Slick endowed with 3,800 acres of land and $2 million. Slick helped to develop Brangus cattle, and his herd of registered Anguses was one of the three largest in the country. His oil activities included the discovery in 1947 of the Benedum Field in West Texas, one of the most significant oil finds in the United States after World War II. Slick was coinventor of the lift-slab method of building construction. He wrote The Last Great Hope (1951) and Permanent Peace: A Check and Balance Plan (1958). He was a collector of modern art and sculpture. As an avid adventurer and world traveler, he spent two weeks with a Waiwai tribe in the jungles of British Guiana in 1956, after his plane made a forced landing during a diamond-hunting trip. Slick hunted wild boar in New Zealand in the 1950s as described in Lawson Burrows’s book Te Anau Anchorage (1974). He also organized several expeditions to search for the "Abominable Snowman" in the Himalayan Mountains and led one of the expeditions himself, in 1957. Later his attention shifted to the Pacific Northwest, where there were reports of a Bigfoot or Sasquatch.

Slick was a trustee and governor of the Texas Research Foundation, the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology (Massachusetts), the Stanford Research Institute (Palo Alto), Trinity University, and the San Antonio Medical Foundation. He was a member of numerous organizations, including the United World Federalists, the National Planning Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Explorers Club. He also served on the board of directors of a number of companies, including Slick Airways and Dresser Industries, and was a founder of the TexStar Corporation. In 1953 he received an honorary doctor of science degree from Trinity University. Slick was married and divorced twice and had four children. He died in a private airplane crash on October 6, 1962, near Dell, Montana, and was buried in Mission Burial Park, San Antonio.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Slick

Thomas Baker "Tom" Slick, Jr. (May 6, 1916 – October 6, 1962) was a San Antonio, Texas based inventor, businessman, adventurer, and heir to an oil business. Slick's father, Thomas Baker Slick, Sr., a.k.a. "The King of the Wildcatters", had made a fortune during the Texas oil boom of the 1920s.

Career

During the 1950s, Slick was an adventurer. He turned his attention to expeditions to investigate the Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti, Bigfoot and the Trinity Alps giant salamander. Slick's interest in cryptozoology was little known until the 1989 publication of the biography Tom Slick and the Search for Yeti, by Loren Coleman. Coleman continued his study of Tom Slick in 2002 with Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology. That book mentions many of Tom Slick's adventures, in politics, art, science, and cryptozoology, including his involvement with the CIA and Howard Hughes.

Tom Slick was a friend of many celebrities, including Hughes and fellow flier Jimmy Stewart. Stewart, for example, assisted a Slick-backed expedition in smuggling a piece of the Pangboche Yeti hand back to England for scientific analysis, Loren Coleman was to discover from Slick's files and confirmation from Stewart before his death.

Slick founded several research organizations, beginning with the forerunner of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in 1941. His most well-known legacy is the non-profit Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), which he founded in 1947 to seek revolutionary advancements in technology. SwRI continues to advance pure and applied science in a variety of fields from lubricant and motor fuel formulation to solar physics and planetary science. He also founded the Mind Science Foundation in San Antonio in 1958 to do consciousness research.

In 1955 he was awarded a patent for the lift slab method of constructing concrete buildings.

He was an advocate of world peace. In 1958 he published the book, Permanent Peace: A Check and Balance Plan. He funded the Tom Slick World Peace lectures at the LBJ Library, and the Tom Slick Professorship of World Peace at the University of Texas.

Nicolas Cage was to have portrayed Slick in a movie, Tom Slick: Monster Hunter, but the project stalled.

Art collection

Tom Slick was an avid collector of modern art. His collection was surveyed by the McNay Art Museum with an exhibition and catalogue titled Tom Slick: International Art Collector.

Death

On October 6, 1962, Slick was returning from a Canadian hunting trip when his airplane crashed in Montana. Reportedly, the aircraft disintegrated in flight.