Jack Crichton
|
Jack Crichton
|
|
|
Born
|
John Alston Crichton
October 16, 1916
Crichton, Louisiana, U.S.
|
|
Died
|
December 10, 2007 (aged 91)
Dallas, Texas,
U.S.
|
|
Resting place
|
Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church
Dallas, Texas, U.S. |
|
Education
|
|
|
Alma mater
|
|
|
Occupation
|
Oil and natural gas industrialist
|
|
Political party
|
|
|
Spouse(s)
|
Marilyn Berry Crichton
|
|
Children
|
2
|
John Alston Crichton, known as Jack
Crichton (October 16, 1916 – December 10, 2007),[1] was
an oil and natural gas industrialist
from Dallas, Texas,
who was among the first of his ranks to recognize the importance of petroleum reserves
in the Middle East.[2] In
1964, he carried the Republican banner
in a fruitless campaign against the reelection of Governor John B. Connally, Jr., then a Democrat,
who in 1973 switched parties.
In 1990, Crichton (pronounced KREI-tun) wrote
in an opinion piece for the Dallas Morning News, stating that he first
realized the vastness of the Middle Eastern oil reserves prior to 1950. He and
a coworker determined, he said, that the Burgan Field in Kuwait,
for example, held ten billion barrels of crude oil. In 1951, he helped to
establish San Juan Oil Company in Dallas, where he became the vice president of
operations. During the 1950s, he took a group of American businessmen to Yemen to
search for oil. During his long career, he was the president of the Yemen
Development Corporation and the Dorchester Gas Corporation, Crichton was also
involved in the mining of copper, zinc, gold, silver,
and nickelthrough
his Arabian Shield Development Company.[2]
Early years and education
Crichton was born on a cotton plantation in
the community of Crichton near Coushatta in Red River Parish in
northwestern Louisiana. He graduated in 1933 from C.E. Byrd High Schoolin Shreveport, Louisiana, and then
enrolled at Texas A&M University in College Station. He played tennis, basketball,
and ran cross country track. His
classmates included future industrialist H.R. "Bum" Bright and Earle Cabell,
later a U.S. Representative and a mayor of
Dallas.[citation needed] Crichton
served TAMU as the president of the Lettermen's Association and chairman of the
Development Foundation. He also served on the board of the Association of
Former Students from 1965–1968, was the association president in 1967, and in
1983 was named a Distinguished Alumnus.[3] He
later obtained a Master of Science degree
from Massachusetts Institute of Technology of Boston, where he was affiliated
with Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.[2]
Military
Crichton served in the Army as a field artillery
officer and special agent. He won the Air Medal,
five Battle Stars, and the Bronze Star Medal.
He retired as a Colonel in
the US Army Reserve.[3]
During World War II,
Crichton served in Europein the Office of Strategic Services,
the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.
He was a field artillery officer and special agent. In 1946, Crichton was
recruited by Everette DeGolyer, a former conservation
director in the administration of U.S. PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt and later
a co-founder of Texas Instruments,
to operate a group of companies which renamed frequently, presumably to make it
more difficult to trace their operations.
In 1952, Crichton joined a syndicate that included
DeGolyer and Clint Murchison of Dallas to use
connections in the government of General Francisco Franco to
obtain drilling rights in Spain.
The operation was handled by Delta Drilling, owned by Joe Zeppa.[citation needed] Crichton served as
vice president of the Empire Trust Company from 1953 to 1959.[4]
In 1956, Crichton became commander of the 488th
Military Intelligence Detachment, which operated under Lieutenant Colonel
George Whitmeyer, the overall commander of all United States Army Reserve units
in East Texas.
Intelligence matterers
Prior to his 1964 political campaign, Crichton had
developed a close association with the future
At the time of the assassination of President
Kennedy and the wounding of Governor Connally, Crichton was attending the
annual luncheon held that year at the Adolphus Hotel on Commerce Street in
Dallas on the Friday before Thanksgiving Day to
honor the TAMU and University of Texas football teams,
who meet on the gridiron annually on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Crichton
recalls:
"I walked over to Elm Street to see the Kennedy
delegation. . . . President Kennedy and Jackie made a handsome
couple. She was resplendent in her pink dress and pink pillbox hat. The crowds
on the sidewalks applauded, and waved as they drove by. . . . I entered the
hotel . . . The room was almost filled, and people were seated at the
individual tables. . . . We had the invocation, and many guests began to eat
their lunch. Suddenly we heard sirens screaming and someone from outside ran up
to the head table and excitedly said, 'The President, Vice President, and
Governor Connally have all been shot.' I stood and announced the news. There
was stunned silence in the room. Someone then produced a radio, and the news
confirmed that the President had been shot.. . . "[5]
Gubernatorial race
In making his race for governor, Crichton had to
resign as president of the Association of Former Students of Texas A&M, a
position to which he had just been elected. A classmate from Houston named
John Lindsey moved up from vice president to head the organization.[6]He
served in the post in 1967 instead. Crichton tapped a neighbor, Hughes Brown,
as his campaign manager. Brown told Crichton that the assassination in Dallas
meant an "uphill battle, but you will have a chance to advance the cause
of the Republican Party in Texas, and in politics anything can happen."[7] Prior
to the assassination, a poll had showed John F. Kennedy trailing in a trial
heat in Texas for the 1964 general election.[8]
As Crichton ran for governor, George H.W. Bush
sought the U.S. Senate seat held by the liberal Democrat Ralph W. Yarborough of Austin.
Crichton was unopposed for his nomination, but Bush faced a primary fight from
the 1962 gubernatorial nominee Jack Cox of
Houston. Crichton and Bush spoke from some of the same podiums that year.
Crichton traveled 55,000 miles (89,000 km) in the campaign, addressed
audiences in 85 cities and towns, and made 275 speeches. At the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, California,
he was elected chairman of the Permanent Organization Committee and gave the
report of that panel from the convention floor.[9]
Crichton strongly supported the Barry M. Goldwater presidential
candidacy: "In my opinion Goldwater would have made a great president. He
would either have withdrawn our presence in Vietnam or
gone whole hog to win it, instead of the piecemeal strategy of the Johnson administration
that so hampered our military leaders as they in effect were not allowed to win
the Vietnam conflict."[10]
In the campaign, Crichton focused on these points:
(1) his opposition to the policies of President Johnson, (2) lowering state
taxes, (3) cutting oil and beef imports, (4) stronger criminal justice measures
to protect citizens from criminals, (5) increasing Texas' oil production, (6)
opposition to a state civil rightslaw,
(7) full voting rights for U.S. military personnel, (8) state water resource
development, (9) reduction of traffic problems, (10) more decentralization in
college and university administration, (11) higher public school teacher pay,
(12) development of a two-party system, and (13) ethics in state government.[11]
Crichton traveled to Junction,
Texas, during the campaign to meet with former Democratic Governor Coke Stevenson,
the official loser by eighty-seven votes in the 1948 runoff primary for the
U.S. Senate against Lyndon Johnson. Stevenson had supported John Tower in the
1960 senatorial general election against Johnson and was backing Goldwater in
1964 as well in the presidential contest. Stevenson told Crichton that the
election "is an important part of American history, for it got Lyndon to
the Senate, which he later controlled, and was a stepping stone to his becoming
President. As for me, I was depressed for quite a while, but in retrospect it
has allowed me to enjoy my ranch and my young daughter. With that, we had
another bourbon and branch water, and I thanked him and departed."[12] Though
Crichton and Bush were both defeated, the latter ran a stronger race against
Yarborough than Crichton managed against Connally.
Yarborough and Connally were
sharp intra-party rivals at the time. Final results showed Connally with
1,877,793 votes (73.8 percent) to Crichton's 661,675 (26 percent). Crichton
did, however, outpoll the tally amassed by the following Republican candidate
against Connally in 1966, Thomas Everton Kennerly, Sr. (1903–2000), of Houston,
by more than 300,000 votes in a lower-turnout election.[13]Kennerly
ran unsuccessfully in 1964 for a seat on the Texas Supreme Court.
Crichton wrote the book The Republican-Democrat
Political Campaigns in Texas in 1964, which among other topics discusses the
split at the 1964 convention between the partisans of Barry M. Goldwater and Nelson A. Rockefeller and the
last-minute attempt by William Warren Scranton of Pennsylvania to
bridge the differences. Crichton and Bush supported the eventual nominee,
Goldwater, the U.S. senator from Arizona who
lost Texas by a wide margin to native son Lyndon B. Johnson.[14] Crichton
went to a summer meeting in Hershey, Pennsylvania,
having flown on the private jet of Winthrop Rockefeller, then the
Republican gubernatorial nominee against Orval E.
Faubus in Arkansas.[15]
In Amarillo,
Crichton was accompanied in a campaign appearanced by actor Clint Walker,
former star of the ABC television seriesCheyenne, who had once lived
in Brownwood, Texas.[16] Though
he addressed some large audiences during the campaign, in Muleshoe in Bailey County in West Texas
Crichton spoke from the back of a wagon to only five people plus a stray dog.[16]
Crichton noted that in 1964 he had spent $65,000 on
his race, the majority for five hundred billboards to promote his name
identification. He also depended heavily on local television and newspaper
coverage in the cities that he visited.[17] About
half of Crichton's spending was from his personal funds. Crichton's
expenditures averaged ten cents for each vote received, whereas the losing 2002
gubernatorial candidate, Democrat Tony Sanchez of Laredo,
spent $10 per vote, having disbursed $20 million in his campaign.[18]
Death and legacy
Having served as colonel of the 488th Military
Intelligence Detachment, Crichton received the Legion of Merit upon
his retirement from the Army Reserve in 1967.[19]
Crichton was president of Nafco Oil and Gas and
owned Dorchester Gas Producing Company.[20] He
was a member of the Society of Petroleum Evaluation Engineers Club and served
as its vice-president in 1964 and president in 1965.[21] Crichton
served as director of Florida Gas Company, Clark Oil and Refining, Whitehall
Corporation, Transco Energy, and the Consolidated Development Corporation.[2] In
1965, he wrote the book The Dynamic Natural Gas Industry, published by
the University of Oklahoma Press in Norman, Oklahoma.[22]
Crichton died in Dallas of complications from cancer at
the age of ninety-one. He and his wife, the former Marilyn Berry (1927-2010), a
native of Eureka in Greenwood County in
southeastern Kansas who
came to Dallas in the late 1940s to work for Braniff
Airlines.[23]The
couple had two daughters, Catherine C. Morris and husband Craig Morris and Anne
C. Crews (born 1953) and husband Kyle W. Crews (born 1955). Anne was formerly
an assistant press secretary in the first administration of Governor Bill Clements.
Crichton also had a surviving sister, Frances "Dinks" Atkinson, and
two grandchildren.[3] The
Crichtons are interred in the columbarium of Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church in
Dallas, of which they had been among the earliest members.[24]
In his short memoir, Crichton describes his
political legacy:
"Although I lost to a popular governor with his
arm in a sling from the Kennedy tragedy, I think I was successful in helping to
establish the Republican Party . . . to make Texas a two-party state. I met and
made friends with some wonderful people who shared my views. An example; twenty
years after the election I was in an airport in Baltimore, and an elderly lady
came up to me and said, 'I was your precinct chairman in Brownsville, and I'll always be
grateful for your effort in the 1964 election.' Such an appreciation made my
efforts in 1964 worthwhile."[25]
Crichton recalled how 1964 brought two new names to
national political prominence, Ronald W. Reagan,
who gave the celebrated television speech for Goldwater on October 27, 1964,
and George H. W. Bush, though defeated in the first of two Senate bids later
became Reagan's vice president and
presidential successor. Crichton continued: "The election also established
the foundation of the Republican Party in Texas under [state chairman] Peter O'Donnell's leadership, and the
voters were shown qualified candidates who stood for conservative principles.
The influx into Texas by Republicans from other states who shared these
principles finally led to the Republican Party controlling both the [state]
House and Senate in 2003."[26]
Crichton's papers are deposited at the George Bush Presidential Library in
College Station. He had first been invited to turn over his files to Baylor University in Waco but
decided Texas A&M would be the more appropriate venue, considering his past
ties to the university and to George H. W. Bush.
^ Jump up to:a b c d "Joe Simnacher,
"John Alston "Jack" Crichton: Oilman, military officer in
WWII"". Dallas Morning News December 15,
2007. Retrieved October 9, 2015.
^ Jump up to:a b c "Association
past president Jack Crichton '37 passes away".
aggienetwork.com. Retrieved April 8,2010.[dead link]
^ Jack
Crichton, The Republican-Democrat Political Campaigns in Texas in 1964,
self-published, 2004, pp. 7-8, ISBN 1-4184-2574-5 (paperback)
^ Crichton,
p. 16
^ Crichton,
p. 15
^ Crichton,
p. 44
^ Crichton,
pp. 53-55
^ Crichton,
p. 48
^ Crichton,
p. 58
^ Crichton,
pp. 35-37
^ Congressional
Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, Texas governorship
^ "Book: The
Republican-Democrat Political Campaigns: In Texas in 1964".
flipkart.com. Retrieved April 9, 2010.
^ Crichton,
p. 27
^ Crichton,
p. 34
^ Crichton,
pp. 56, 59
^ Hurst,
William, ed. (1968–1969). "Officers and
Directors" (PDF). Journal of the Society
of Petroleum Evaluation Engineers Club. I: 2, 12. Retrieved July
20, 2017.
^ Crichton,
p. 79
^ Crichton,
p. 50
^ Crichton,
pp. 48-49
|
Party political offices
|
||
|
Succeeded by
T.E. Kennerly |
||
No comments:
Post a Comment