Frank Phillips

Frank Phillips (November 28 , 1873 – August 23, 1950) founded Phillips Petroleum in Bartlesville, Oklahoma (marketed as Phillips 66) in 1917, along with his brother, Lee Eldas "L.E." Phillips, Sr. In 2002, Phillips Petroleum merged with Conoco Oil Company and became ConocoPhillips.

Frank Phillips was born in Scotia, Greeley County, Nebraska and died in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Young Frank was still in his crib in July 1874, when swarms of grasshoppers descended on Nebraska, cutting a convert|100|mi|km|sing=on by convert|300|mi|km|sing=on swath and devastating crops throughout the area. The devastation eventually extended to include Greeley County, where the Phillips family had a farm outside Scotia. Phillips' parents, Judge Lewis Franklin Phillips, the county's first magistrate, and his wife Lucinda packed up their belongings and moved with young Frank to a small farm in rural southwest Iowa. [Phillips: The First 66 Years, 1983, Phillips Petroleum Company, P. 12.]

A few years later, young Frank began his first entrepreneurial venture, hiring out to area farmers to dig potatoes (after completing his chores) for 10 cents a day. At age 14, Phillips persuaded a barber in nearby Creston, Iowa, to take him in as an apprentice. Ten years later Phillips owned all three barber shops in Creston. [Phillips: The First 66 Years, 1983, Phillips Petroleum Company, P. 14.]

One of his barber shops was in the basement of bank in Creston. The bank's president, John Gibson, had considered Phillips an up-and-coming entrepreneur for some time. Shortly after Phillips married Gibson's daughter, Jane, on February 18, 1897, Gibson asked Phillips to join him in the bond business. Phillips began selling bonds in the New England states and the Chicago area. [Phillips: The First 66 Years, 1983, Phillips Petroleum Company, P. 15.]

During a stop in St. Louis while en route back to Creston from Chicago in 1903, Phillips encountered C. B. Larabee, an old friend from Iowa, who was serving as a Methodist missionary to the Osage Indians west of Bartlesville in Indian Territory. The area, which is now Osage County, Oklahoma, just west of Bartlesville, was rich in oil, and what proved to be a decades-long boom was just getting under way. Later that year, after Phillips and Gibson made two trips to Bartlesville, and Phillips and younger brother L.E. organized the Anchor Oil & Gas Company with Gibson's assistance. [Phillips: The First 66 Years, 1983, Phillips Petroleum Company, P. 15.]

Anchor opened an office in Bartlesville in 1905, secured a driller and drilled their first wildcat well, the Holland No. 1, where they struck oil on June 23, 1905. The brothers' second and third wells were dry holes, and they barely had enough money left to drill a fourth well, the Anna Anderson. The Anna Anderson was a gusher, and the successful well enabled the brothers to raise $100,000 through the sale of stock. The Anna Anderson was the first of 80 consecutive producing wells drilled for the brothers' company. [Phillips: The First 66 Years, 1983, Phillips Petroleum Company, P. 16-17.]

Also in 1905, Frank and L. E. formed another oil company, the Lewcinda Oil Company, with brother Waite. However, Waite, who preferred to work independently, soon left Lewcinda and formed his own bank and oil company, the Independent Oil & Gas Co. (which was merged into Phillips Petroleum in 1930) in Tulsa. In late 1905, Frank and L.E. formed a bank, Citizens Bank and Trust, in Bartlesville with $50,000 capital. They acquired a rival bank, the Bartlesville National Bank, consolidating the banks under the latter name. The bank later became the First National Bank of Bartlesville. [Phillips: The First 66 Years, 1983, Phillips Petroleum Company, P. 15.]

Phillips still had a desire to be a big-time banker. In 1916, he and L.E. decided that the boom-bust instability of the oil business was not for them. They made plans to open a bank in Kansas City that would be the cornerstone of a chain of banks throughout the Midwest. Before those plans could be carried out, the U.S. became involved in World War I. The price of oil quickly increased from 40 cents a barrel to more than $1 a barrel, and the brothers decided instead to consolidate their holdings in a single company, Phillips Petroleum Company, which they incorporated on June 13, 1917 under Delaware law. The new company had assets of $3 million, 27 employees and leases throughout Oklahoma and Kansas. [Phillips: The First 66 Years, 1983, Phillips Petroleum Company, P. 19-20.]

Phillips once described himself to employees, to whom he was known as "Uncle Frank": "Work hard and demonstrate loyalty, and I'm a great guy to work for. Do neither, and there is no one worse." [Phillips: The First 66 Years, 1983, Phillips Petroleum Company, Pp 59-61.]

On another occasion, he said, "I am egotistical. I exercise the 'privilege and prestige of the office.' I'm bombastic, hard to get along with, an easy touch, a farm boy at heart, and conveniently hard of hearing. I'm just a sentimental old man. I'm tough. and I know it. I'm the boss, and don't let anybody try to question it." [Phillips: The First 66 Years, 1983, Phillips Petroleum Company, P. 59.]

Frank Phillips led the company as its president until age 65, when in 1939 he named Kenneth S. "Boots" Adams to succeed him. The company had reported record profits of $24.1 million the previous year. As Phillips turned over the presidency to Adams, he became the company's first chairman of the board, a position he held until he retired at the age of 76 in 1949, a year before his death. His wife of 50 years had died in 1948.

Phillips was buried beside his wife, Jane (Gibson) Phillips, in the Phillips Family Mausoleum at Woolaroc, Phillips' ranch and country home in Osage County, Oklahoma, southwest of Bartlesville. Frank's siblings included Waite Phillips. In 1944, Phillips had given convert|3700|acre|km2|sing=on acres of the convert|17000|acre|km2|sing=on ranch to the Frank Phillips Foundation and sold the remainder. [Telephone conversation with Bob Fraser, CEO of the Frank Phillips Foundation, Dec. 26, 2007.]

Source: "Phillips: The First 66 Years", 1983, Phillips Petroleum Company, Pp 1-20, 56, 59-61, 72. (The principal author of this official corporate history, though not credited in the book, is Bill Wertz, who was the speech writer for Wm. C. Douce, who was then chairman and chief executive officer of Phillips Petroleum Company.)

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