The dominant media culture shows far too little appreciation, if not unmerited hostility, for wealthy philanthropists, especially conservative ones such as T. Boone Pickens.
Pickens, who died today at 91, earned every penny of his vast wealth, and gave away or bequeathed far more of it than he kept. The Dallas Morning News did a fine job in its feature obituary for him, well worth a read. He made it big not through an inheritance, but by dint of hard work and gumption, beginning as a newspaper boy who added more and more routes to his workload in the midst of the Great Depression.
He founded his oil company with a mere $2,500 in borrowed money. In the course of his lifetime, he donated more than a billion dollars to philanthropic causes ranging from education (half a billion to Oklahoma State University alone) to health and medical research and services, at-risk youth, and Meals on Wheels. And, yes, he donated a ton to political causes, too, conservative ones, largely, although he often made common cause with liberal (but not radical) environmentalists and alternative-energy advocates.
Sometimes Pickens was wrong, as in his significant overselling of the potential for wind farms a decade ago, but he was always pushing, questioning conventional wisdom, and challenging calcified establishments. A career-long crusader for the rights of shareholders against entrenched corporate boards, he never lost a populist air that often made him anathema to groups like the Business Roundtable.
Even in death, Pickens was generous, reportedly leaving more than 90% of his remaining net worth of $500 million to charity.
In sum, Pickens was the kind of man Americans should celebrate, a man who abundantly gave the lie to the idea that the amassing of wealth is inherently evil. An entrepreneurial spirit married to goodwill is one of the greatest forces for human advancement imaginable. T. Boone Pickens was a particularly splendid exemplar of that truth.
