The New York Times - 12.09.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARIESTHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019 N B11

T. Boone Pickens Jr., the swash-
buckling Texas oil-and-gas entre-
preneur whose storied life cast
him in the disparate roles of cor-
porate raider, defender of share-
holder rights, unlikely envi-
ronmentalist, no-holds-barred po-
lemicist for political conserva-
tism, and controversial
philanthropist, died on Wednes-
day at his home in Dallas. He was
91.
Jay Rosser, his spokesman and
longtime chief of staff, confirmed
the death.
Mr. Pickens made big oil com-
panies quake in the 1980s by
threatening to take them over un-
til they bought back his shares at
elevated prices. Business foes de-
nounced him as a “greenmailer”
whose only interest was to make a
quick profit on his stock pur-
chases.
But Mr. Pickens insisted that
his real motives were to shake up
staid boardrooms and enrich ordi-
nary shareholders — “the ne-
glected minority,” as he called
them.
“If you are a stockholder, the
chances are that one way or an-
other, most corporations are mis-
appropriating your money,” he
wrote in his 1987 autobiography,
“Boone.” “It is legal under the sys-
tem; everyday this respectable
crime is perpetrated in corporate
corridors across the country.”
In corporate circles, Mr. Pick-
ens became one of the most hated
men in the United States. But he
was a darling of the media. Athlet-
ically trim and boyish-looking, he
explained his business strategies
with self-deprecating humor and
homespun anecdotes in a South-
western twang.
“My I.Q. is the gas price,” he told
Texas Monthly in 1982. “At $3 I’m
a genius. At $1.50 I’m a moron.
Don’t talk to me too fast; it’s at
$1.53 today.”
Using his own Mesa Petroleum
Company as his financial vehicle,
Mr. Pickens launched takeover
bids for much larger oil firms, in-
cluding Gulf Oil, Phillips Petro-
leum and Unocal. None of these
attempts succeeded, and Mr. Pick-
ens railed against his corporate
targets for adopting tactics, like
“poison pills,” that made hostile
takeovers prohibitively expen-
sive. (Years later, when Mesa was
under threat, he didn’t hesitate to
use the same poison pill tactic.)
But he still managed to extract
hundreds of millions of dollars in
profits by getting these compa-
nies to buy back their shares from
him at a premium in exchange for
promises that he would just go
away.
The efforts of raiders like Mr.
Pickens helped profoundly
change American corporations by
forcing management to acknowl-
edge the supremacy of the share-
holder. But the transformation
created new pitfalls as well. Top
executives linked their salaries to
the performance of their compa-
nies’ shares and then enriched
themselves further with stock op-
tions.
By the early 2000s, the obses-
sion with ever-higher share prices
led to numerous financial scan-
dals involving multibillion-dollar
firms whose management fraudu-
lently manipulated company ac-
counts to show profits instead of
losses. And the short-term obses-
sion with higher share prices of-
ten reduced longer-term invest-
ments.
In classic wildcatter style, Mr.
Pickens’s fortunes rose to prodi-
gious heights and then collapsed,
only to resume their roller coaster
course in later years. At the apex
of his fame and fortune, in the
mid-1980s, he appeared on the

covers of national magazines, owned vast ranches and criss- crossed the country on corporate jets belonging to Mesa. He founded and headed the United Shareholders Association to lobby for more rights for ordinary shareholders and against legisla- tion aimed at thwarting corporate raiders like him. Then, in the 1990s, the Pickens cult collapsed. He borrowed ex- cessively to expand Mesa’s natural gas production. But gas prices failed to rise, and as Mesa’s share price plummeted, the company became a target for corporate raiders. When he sought to save Mesa from a hostile takeover by poison pill tactics, he was de- nounced as a hypocrite in the press and even by members of his United Shareholders. He ended up being forced out of Mesa. But a decade later, Mr. Pickens was again riding high. By 2002, thanks to a commodities fund he headed, his personal fortune climbed past $200 million, more than he was worth during his corporate-raiding heyday. He had also shed his old populist image

and embraced the conservative Republican cause. During the 2004 presidential campaign that led to George W. Bush’s re-elec- tion, Mr. Pickens helped finance attacks on the Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry, Mr. Bush’s opponent. By 2010, when he was past 80, Mr. Pickens had become a billion- aire by running a natural gas-ori- ented hedge fund, BP Capital. He closed it down in January 2018 because of ill health and the fund’s poor performance. Mr. Pickens also headed a na- tionwide campaign to push for energy self-sufficiency through the exploitation of natural gas, wind power and solar energy with the aim of reducing the United States’ dependence on oil imports from the Middle East. “We’re infidels with most of these people, and they have no use for us,” he told The New York Times in 2010. He gained the backing of some environmentalists and liberal Democrats. “It’s been valuable to have Boone as part of the team,” said Carl Pope, who was executive di-

rector of the Sierra Club at the time, in response to the oilman’s backing of alternative energy sources. Former Vice President Al Gore also backed Mr. Pickens’s alternative energy campaign. Mr. Pickens even claimed to be willing to work with Senator

Kerry despite his attacks against him only six years before. “That’s a long time ago,” Mr. Pickens told The Times in 2010. “When you’re old, you can’t remember that far back.” But as was often the case, his claims outpaced reality. In June 2007, he announced he would build the world’s largest wind farm, installing huge wind tur-

bines across the Texas Panhandle. By 2011 he had scrapped the project and decided to focus exclu- sively on natural gas — the energy source that most defined him. T. Boone Pickens Jr. developed his nose for the oil-and-gas business as a boy. He was born on May 22, 1928, in Holdenville, Okla., a cattle town surrounded by oil wells. His father, Thomas Boone Pickens — a distant relative of the legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone — was a lawyer for the Phillips Petroleum Company who speculated on oil leases. His mother, Grace (Molonson) Pick- ens, ran Holdenville’s gasoline-ra- tioning program during World War II and, according to her son, provided a pragmatic, analytical outlook that balanced her husband’s risk-taking nature. “I was very fortunate in my gene mix,” Mr. Pickens said in a 1985 Time magazine cover story. After graduating from Okla- homa State University in 1951, Mr. Pickens got a job as a geologist at Phillips, helped by a recommen- dation from his father. But bored by the large corporate structure,

he quit a few years later. In 1956, he invested $2,500 to create his own drilling company. He took it public in 1964 and renamed it Mesa Petroleum. Some 20 years later he launched a hostile, unsuccessful bid for Phillips. He had made simi- lar failing takeover attempts in 1982 for Cities Services and in 1983 for Gulf Oil. Though portrayed as a reckless greenmailer, Mr. Pick- ens earned almost $900 million for himself and his allies by selling their shares in the three compa- nies in the aftermath of the takeover bids. Mr. Pickens’s five marriages — to Lynn O’Brien, Beatrice Carr Stuart, Madeleine Paulson, Nelda Cain and Toni Chapman Brinker — ended in divorce. He is survived by four children from his first marriage, Deborah Pickens Stovall, Pam Pickens Grace and Michael and Tom Pick- ens; a daughter of his second wife’s, Liz Pickens Cordia, whom he adopted; 11 grandchildren, and a number of great-grandchildren. Late in life, Mr. Pickens gained renown as a philanthropist, giving away almost $1 billion to charity, with half going to his alma mater, Oklahoma State University. But even his philanthropy stirred controversy. According to The Times, a $165 million gift to Oklahoma State University on Dec. 30, 2005, “spent less than an hour on December 30 in the ac- count of the university’s charity, O.S. Cowboy Golf Inc., before it was invested in a hedge fund con- trolled by Mr. Pickens, BP Capital Management.” The university had previously placed $277 million in the fund, though Mr. Pickens asserted that he had waived any management fees for the university’s invest- ments. Mr. Pickens maintained that embarrassment had never de- terred his multiple attempts to re- cast his image. “I have always be- lieved that it’s important to show a new look periodically,” he told Forbes in 1994. “Predictability can lead to failure.” Despite his boundless energy well into later years, toward the end of his life, after a series of strokes, he became more accept- ing of his mortality, writing on the job-networking website LinkedIn in July 2017: “Just a year ago I felt immortal, wearing my age with pride, even joking about it. Last year I opened a speech with this: ‘The other day I turned 88 and realized my life was half over.’ I refused to call my 2008 autobiography ‘Life in the Fourth Quarter’ because, well, hell, I wasn’t in the fourth quarter. But things have changed for me since the strokes. I clearly am in the fourth quarter, and the clock is ticking.”

T. Boone Pickens, Oil Tycoon Who Thrived Off Takeover Threats, Dies at 91

By JONATHAN KANDELL

T. Boone Pickens in Dallas in 2009. He was, among other things, a defender of shareholder rights and an unlikely environmentalist.

MATT NAGER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

LENNOX MCLENDON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Former Vice President Al Gore, above left, supported alternative

energy proposals by Mr. Pickens, here addressing a National

Clean Energy Project forum in Washington in 2009. At left, Mr.

Pickens, center, with his wife, Beatrice, and Sidney Tassin, assist-

ant vice president of finances of Mesa Petroleum Co., in 1985.

RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

A wildcatter and

corporate raider who

once said, ‘My I.Q.

is the gas price.’

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed re-
porting.

Al Carmichael, who scored the
first touchdown in the old Ameri-
can Football League in 1960 while
playing for the Denver Broncos,
died on Saturday in Palm Desert,
Calif. He was 90.
His death was announced by
the Broncos.
In the A.F.L.’s inaugural game,
on Sept. 9, 1960, Carmichael
caught a 59-yard touchdown pass
from Frank Tripucka, and the
Broncos beat the Boston Patriots,
13-10, at Nickerson Field, on the
Boston University campus.
A halfback, Carmichael played
for Denver in 1960 and 1961 after a
six-year stint with the Green Bay
Packers, who had selected him in
the first round (seventh overall).
He set an N.F.L. record with a 106-
yard kick return in 1956 and was
elected to the Packers Hall of
Fame in 1974.
The A.F.L. and the N.F.L. an-
nounced a merger in 1966 and offi-
cially became a single league in
1970.
Albert Reinhold Carmichael
was born on Nov. 10, 1928, in Bos-
ton. While playing for U.S.C., he
scored the winning touchdown in
the 1953 Rose Bowl against Wis-
consin. It was the only score in the
game, which U.S.C. won, 7-0.
He also worked as a Hollywood

stuntman and double in dozens of movies, including “Jim Thorpe — All-American” (1951) and “Sparta- cus” (1960). The Desert Sun newspaper in Palm Springs said he is survived

by his wife, Barbara; two daugh- ters, Pam and Stacy, from an earli- er marriage, to Jan Carmichael, who died; and two stepsons, Darin and Bruce Durkee. His son, Chris, also died before him.

Al Carmichael, 90; Catch Made A.F.L. History

Al Carmichael of the Green Bay Packers in 1953. He later played

for the Denver Broncos of the upstart A.F.L. in 1960 and 1961.

VERNON BIEVER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

By The Associated Press

Gottdiener, Stephen Haken, Bernardette Krasna, Anne

Lynch, Lorine Plever, Herb Schmidt, Gary Stamp, Calixte

GOTTDIENER—Stephen, Age 87, a resident of Dorset, Vermont, passed away unex- pectedlyonSeptember6,

Stevewasborn in
Brooklyn, NY and spent
much of his life in Montclair,
New Jersey before moving to
Manhattan and ultimately re-
tiring to Vermont. His profes-
sional accomplishments
were many but his proudest
achievement (ashewas
quick to share) was his fami-
ly. Steve was an avid skier
and golfer but he will be re-
membered most for his big
smile, his compassionate
heart and his engaging and
loving personality. He is sur-
vived by his beloved wife,
Phyllis, his children, Gary and
Sheryl and Scott and Karen,
and his grandchildren, Adam,
Dana, Jared and Emma.

HAKEN—Bernardette Gillespie, “Shuggies,” September 5, 2019. Graveside service Maple Grove Ceme- tery on Friday, 11am, 127-15 Kew Gardens Rd., Kew Gar- dens. Memorial celebration to come. Survived by husband Steve, son David, daughter-in-law Natalie, sis- ter-in-law Roberta, brother- in-law Steve, nephews and nieces, family and friends in theUnited Kingdomand throughout the United States. Well loved, smart, funny, a great friend, the BEST.

KRASNA—Anne Scheingarten, afteralongillness,Anne Scheingarten Krasna, daughter of the late Estelle and Louis Scheingarten, passed away peacefully at her home on Tuesday, September 10th. Her husband and daughter were at her side. She is survived by her husband Irwin H. Krasna, MD; daughter Eta Krasna Levenson and son- in-law Mark Levenson; sons MarkJ.Krasna,MDand daughter-in-law Diane; Rich- ard Krasna and daughter-in- law Adina; Dr. Joshua Krasna and daughter-in-law Suzanne; Benjamin Krasna and daughter-in-law Sharon; 16 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren; sisters Susan Rut- tner and Carol Reichel and

brothers-in-law Hyam Reich- el andthelate Norman Ruttner, MD. Anne was loving and loved by her entire family. She was a staunch Zionist from teenage and an early activist for Soviet Jew- ry. Funeral services and bur- ial in Israel. Her husband and children will sit shiva in Israel

her sisters will sit in New
York. Call for information.
LYNCH—Lorine.
The partners, counsel, asso-
ciates and staff of the firm of
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton
& Garrison LLP express pro-
found sorrow at the death of
Lorine Lynch, beloved moth-
er of our friend and partner,
Loretta E. Lynch. We express
our deepest sympathies to
Loretta and her father the
Rev. Lorenzo A. Lynch, Sr.
and to all members of the
family.
PLEVER—Herb.
95, husband of Sylvia (died in
2018); father of Terry Kalb
(Paul) and Steve Plever (Gin-
na); grandpa of Joanna
(Gabe),Ben,Joe,Louise;
great-grandpa of Noah, died
on September 9. He was a
WWII vet, lawyer, and civil
activist in Rochdale Village.
Herb had passion for social
justice, Italy, opera, folk danc-
ing. He co-founded NY
Bromeliad Society, wrote its
journal, and was a trustee of
BromeliadSocietyInterna-
tional. Donations: ACLU.

SCHMIDT—Gary A. Age 56, on Sunday, Septem- ber 8, 2019, at Hackensack Medical Center, Hackensack, NJ. Husband of Stephanie Le- bowitz; father of Olivia Schmidt; son of George and Mildred (deceased) Schmidt; brother of Robert Schmidt and his wife Gina Giuliano. A visitation will be held on Sa- turday, September 14, 2019 from 10am to 1pm and 3-5pm at Higgins Home for Funer- als, 752 Mountain Blvd., Watchung, NJ. A memorial service will follow at 5pm. A completeobituarycanbe found at: http://www.higginsfuneral home.com

STAMP—Calixte. Our beloved stepmother passed away peacefully on Saturday the 7th of Septem- ber. She was surrounded by her family and friends. Her service will be held on the 14th of September at 12 noon at the Old Whalers Church, 44 Union St., Sag Harbor 11963.

EVANS—Harold. February 18, 1935 - Septem- ber 12, 2017. Always cher- ished. Forever loved.

HOFFER—Bernard. 01/17/27 - 09/12/18 Husband, Daddy, Poppy Your loving family

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In Memoriam