Richard King Jr. was an American banker and rancher. He served as vice-president, president and chairman of the board of the Corpus Christi National Bank, Texas.
Background
Richard King Jr. was born on December 17, 1884 on the La Puerta de Agua Dulce Ranch, in Nueces County, Texas, United States to Richard King II and Elizabeth Pearl Ashbrook. He was named for his grandfather, Captain Richard King, founder of the celebrated King Ranch, who died four months later. (The patriarch bore no middle initials, nor have any of his namesake progeny, resulting in a rotation of "Jr. " and numerals that often hinders identification. ) The La Puerta Ranch, some 40, 000 "good and well-watered acres" given to Richard's parents as a wedding gift, was home, school, and playground for the boy.
Education
Richard studied under private tutors until he reached high school age. At that time he went to West Texas Military Academy in San Antonio, as had his father before him, and graduated with honors in 1903. Thereafter he studied agriculture at the University of Missouri for two years.
Career
About 1905 King started to participate with his father in farming and ranching activities. Under the terms of Captain King's will, his widow, Henrietta, was his sole heir to the nearly million-acre King Ranch located South of Corpus Christi, and their son-in-law, Robert J. Kleberg, assumed management of the vast cattle empire. After Henrietta King's death in 1924, and following a lengthy trusteeship by Kleberg, each surviving heir received additional acreage, but ranch operation remained centralized. Richard King, the grandson (whose father had died in 1922), shared ownership of the Santa Fe division, some 150, 000 acres, with his two sisters. The Captain had long said that his goal was "to buy land, and never sell it, " but this soon jeopardized the financial operations of the ranch. Richard once remarked, "People talk about what we inherited, but in those days it was mostly debts and hard times. "
Richard's designated role was therefore to become the banking liaison, and in 1913 he was appointed to the board of directors of the Corpus Christi National Bank, where his grandmother was the principal stockholder. Much of his time was spent going from bank to bank generating credit extensions and additional loans to keep both bank and ranch solvent. After his mother's death in 1924, he was one of the eight trustees and four executors named in her will to direct the ten-year trusteeship she set up. He became vice-president of the bank in 1924, president in 1929, and chairman of the board in 1950. When Corpus Christi National Bank and State National Bank merged in 1956, he became chairman of the board, a position he held until 1970, when he was named chairman emeritus.
Having been raised on the ranch at La Puerta and possessing early memories of being boosted onto a saddle in front of a vaquero for a daily ride, King was perhaps happiest directing farming and ranching activities. For several decades, King operated his ranches independently, using the historic "HK" brand Captain King had used before adopting the "Running W. " He also continued the farming interests of his father, who admired the "more civilized" techniques and livestock of the Midwest: these included raising experimental crops, encouraging settlement by farmers, and even selling small portions of ranchland; Richard continued and expanded these practices.
In 1956, ownership of the Santa Fe Ranch was transferred to the King Ranch, Inc. , in return for 10 percent mineral rights on 600, 000 acres of King Ranch property. The La Puerta Ranch, along with the historic ranch house constructed by his father after the original house burned, was sold in 1974 to one of his nephews. King's interests in commerce were almost all related to the enhancement of the agricultural and oil industries that formed the backbone of the Texas Coastal Bend economy. As chairman of the Nueces County Board of Navigation and Canal Commissioners, King guided the growth of the port of Corpus Christi from a small shallow-water turning basin into a deepwater facility nearly ten miles long, capable of handling modern tankers and freighters that are essential for moving oil, cotton, grain, and other agricultural products. Before port expansion, cotton was shipped by rail to the port at Galveston.
An affable man, whose desk in the bank lobby was accessible to all, King served on the boards of directors of numerous other corporations and financial institutions, including chairman of the Texas Sanitary Livestock Commission, director of Frost National Bank, Central Power & Light, Texas-Mexican Railway, Southwestern Life Insurance Co. of Dallas, National Finance Credit Corporation in Fort Worth, and Regional Agricultural Credit Corporation, Houston.
Achievements
Views
Quotations:
"Sometimes I don't think I understand all I know about figures and finance, but when I'm at the ranch, then I know what I'm talking about. . Cattle are like poker. They get into a man's blood and there's no cure for it. "
Membership
King belonged to Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the Elks, and the Masonic Lodge. He served as an honorary vice-president and active member of the Southwest Cattle Raiser's Association for more than sixty years.
Connections
King married Minerva Pierpont Heaney, daughter of a prominent Corpus Christi physician, on October 12, 1907. They had two children, and the family moved to Corpus Christi around 1911.