Sid Williams Richardson was a Texas businessman and philanthropist known for his association with the city of Fort Worth.
Background
Jacob August Riis was born in Athens, Texas, the son of John Isidore Richardson and Nancy Bradley. The son of devout Baptists, he was named for Sid Williams, an itinerant minister. Richardson's life story belongs somewhere between myth and fact. A poor boy, he left an estate variously valued from $400 million to $800 million, but as he said on occasion, "After the first hundred million, what the hell?" Much of his wealth lay in oil reserves still in the ground, which makes his wealth hard to estimate. But journalists never tired of trying. Since he disliked publicity, he gave no interviews, which only added to the myth. Again, as he liked to say, "You ain't learning nothing when you're talking. " Fired for laziness from his first job at the age of sixteen with a cotton compress, he proved to have anything but a lazy mind.
Education
He attended Baylor University and Simmons College (now Hardin-Simmons University) for about eighteen months in 1911-1912 before his money ran out.
Career
He then became a salesman for an oil well supply company, an oil scout, and a lease purchaser. In 1919 he became an independent oil producer in Fort Worth, where he lived for the remainder of his life.
Richardson was also interested in the cattle business, where his first business coup came early. With a combination of drought and tick infestation ruining the cattle industry around Athens, Texas, Richardson went to Louisiana, where he found "fat, red calves in the high Louisiana grass. "
Back home, he hastened to a department store and bought a loud, checked suit, an oxblood striped silk shirt, toothpick-toed shoes, and a checked cap. Then he borrowed money from the First National Bank of Athens and returned to Ruston, Louisiana. There he walked around town flashing bills and telling people, "I don't know anything about stock but pa and ma gave me this money and I think I'll buy me some calves. " Figuring that some ignorant city dude had come to town, local cattlemen rushed to sell to him, cutting prices against each other until they were selling below the Louisiana market price, which in turn was below the Texas market price. Richardson shipped his cattle to Athens, took them to the town square on First Monday (a trades day in Texas), and sold them for three times their purchase price. Richardson now had his stake with which to tackle the burgeoning oil industry.
After 1919 Richardson's fortunes fluctuated widely, and he often remarked, "I've been broke so often I thought it was habit-forming. " His first oil field was in Ward County in west Texas in 1932.
In 1935 he helped bring in the rich Keystone field in Winkler County and three years later was active in developing the Slaughter field west of Lubbock. The next year he turned to Louisiana, where his holdings were sold after his death for nearly $22 million. He also owned a refinery at Texas City and a carbon-black plant at Odessa, Tex. With Amon Carter, publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, he owned the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth. He was an executive with the Texas State Network, a string of radio and television stations.
By 1935 Richardson's wealth had grown so vast that his periodic flirtations with bankruptcy terminated, and his status as a multimillionaire became stabilized. At his death he probably controlled more oil reserves than any other individual in the United States and more than several of the major petroleum companies. Richardson operated for years from a two-room "command post" in the Fort Worth Club, although he also maintained an office in a local bank building.
In 1936 he purchased St. Joseph's Island off the Texas coast, a narrow spit of land accessible only by boat or airplane. Here he resided when he was not in Fort Worth, with his employees the only inhabitants of the island. In his Fort Worth headquarters he always kept five or six bags packed, so that he could travel at a moment's notice. Richardson first came to national attention in 1954, when he teamed with another millionaire, Clinton Williams Murchison, then operating in Dallas.
Robert R. Young, another Texan from the Panhandle area, was trying to gain control of the New York Central Railway from the Chase National Bank in New York. Lacking enough resources, Young turned to Murchison and Richardson, who purchased 800, 000 shares from Cyrus S. Eaton's Chesapeake and Ohio Railway for $20 million. Young then became head of the New York Central, an accession treated by Eastern journalists as a buccaneering coup by a trio of Texas brigands. Attempts to interview Richardson on his part in the takeover were fruitless.
"A man is getting in a hell of a shape if he can't buy something without people wanting to know what he's doing, " he said. According to one possibly apocryphal anecdote, Young is supposed to have contacted Murchison, who then called Richardson to say that their fellow Texan was in trouble and needed $5 million from each. Richardson agreed to help. Later, when the sale of stock was about to be consummated, Murchison telephoned Richardson, asking him to deliver his promised $10 million. Richardson demurred. "You said five million" he allegedly said. "No, ten million, " Murchison replied without blanching. "All right, I'll send over the ten million, but next time you call, Clint, don't mumble!"
In August 1957 the House Committee on Government Operations charged that the Army Engineers and Reclamation Bureau had changed its reservoir policy at Richardson's behest. According to the committee report, the engineers had been taking only flowage rights around shores of reservoirs, instead of buying land likely to be flooded periodically. Since Richardson owned a considerable portion of the Benbrook Reservoir near Fort Worth, he was therefore able to hold on to his land. A Department of the Interior assistant secretary claimed that the engineers' order was also detrimental to fish and wildlife development, and considerably diminished recreational values around reservoirs.
According to the committee, Secretary of the Treasury Robert B. Anderson, former Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens, and - by implication - President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself had intervened in behalf of Richardson to get the army engineers to change to the new policy. The committee report was a one-day sensation that was quickly forgotten. The two Texas members of the committee, incidentally, were purposefully absent during the hearings.
The future commander of World War II troops had just been made a brigadier general and was en route to Washington for new orders when his plane was forced down in Dallas.
He continued by train but was unable to get a berth immediately. Richardson, seeing his plight, invited Eisenhower to share Richardson's drawing room until the general could get his sleeping arrangements worked out. Richardson later visited Eisenhower when he was commander-in-chief of Allied troops in western Europe, and in 1948 tried to persuade Eisenhower to run for president on the Democratic ticket.
Richardson's down-home style is illustrated by the story of an invitation to luncheon at the White House during Eisenhower's administration.
In Washington on business, he received an unexpected invitation from the president as transmitted by a White House operator. Richardson asked what was on the menu. The operator, somewhat taken aback, asked why he wanted to know. "Because, " he answered blandly, "I might be able to get a better deal somewhere else in town. " She assured him that though she did not know what the White House was serving that day, he undoubtedly would find no "better deal" anywhere else. Richardson accepted. Richardson's philanthropies were largely private and characteristically little publicized until after his death.
With Murchison he purchased the Del Mar Turf Club in California and assigned its profits to Boys, Incorporated, to combat juvenile delinquency.
He established the Sid Richardson Foundation, which has provided millions of dollars for educational purposes.
In 1964 the foundation gave $750, 000 each to Richardson's two former schools, Baylor and Hardin-Simmons universities, and in 1969 it granted more than $2 million to the University of Texas to purchase an important history of science collection.
When the University of Texas built its Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library complex, the building that provides quarters for the university's Institute of Latin American Studies, Texas Collection and Texas State Historical Association, and Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs was named Sid W. Richardson Hall. Richardson died at his St. Joseph's Island compound. The Reverend Billy Graham officiated at his funeral.
Contemporary journals estimated that the wealth of the "Billionaire Bachelor" was exceeded only by that of H. L. Hunt of Dallas. Richardson was approachable and easy to meet for almost everyone except reporters.
He never showed the arrogance of some other extremely wealthy self-made men and often remarked, "I'd rather be lucky than smart, 'cause a lot of smart people ain't eatin' regular. " He was a superior collector of western art and had one of the more imposing private collections of paintings by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell.
Politics
Richardson was a lifelong Democrat but supported Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. A principal reason was a long admiration for the general, dating back to an accidental meeting.
Richardson's politics usually were moderate to mildly liberal, counter to the stereotype of right-wing Texas oil millionaires.