Walter William Fondren, Sr. (Find A Grave photo)
With his partner, Ross Sterling, Walter W. Fondren, Sr. founded the Humble Oil Company with an $75,000 investment in 1911. Fondren had been an oilfield roughneck, a rotary driller, and a Spindletop independent operator. Fondren was also a drilling equipment expert. He was working many different companies and partnerships by 1905. While Sterling brought financial and management knowledge. Fondren brought oilfield experience to Humble Oil. He was vice-president and director of field operations until his retirement in 1933. Humble Oil Company eventually became Humble Oil and Refining Company and finally Exxon Company U.S.A. (Today the company is known as ExxonMobil.) The company acquired and developed oilfields in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. The company also refined oil and transported crude oil. Among the company’s holdings were more than 1,000 producing wells, more than 1,200 miles of pipeline, and many refineries.
Walter William Fondren was born June 6, 1877, in Union City, Tennessee. When Walter was 6 years old, his father, a Civil War veteran, moved the family to Arkansas looking for better farmland. In Arkansas Walter learned how to drill water wells, a skill he would later use in the oilfield. When he was 17, after his parents’ deaths, he moved to Corsicana, Texas to work in the oilfields.
In 1901, Fondren moved from Corsicana to Beaumont. On February 14, 1903, he married Ella Cochrun.
During his career, Fondren served as an officer on many boards. The National Bank of Commerce, the Federal Housing Administration, Seaboard Life Insurance Company, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Houston YMCA were a few of those entities. He also served in Houston on Methodist Hospital’s board.
Throughout his career, Fondren supported charitable causes and educational programs. He and his wife donated money for the Fondren Library at Southern Methodist University. After his death, his wife, Ella, gave Rice Institute funding for a new library. Houston’s Methodist Hospital, Southwestern University, and Scarritt College in Nashville, Tennessee were among the philanthropic legacies of the Fondrens.
Fondren died on January 5, 1939. He was 61. He was buried in Glenwood Cemetery. Later he was moved to Forest Park Cemetery.
Today we recognize his name on Fondren Road, Fondren Library at Rice University and also at Southern Methodist University, and the Fondren buildings in the Texas Medical Center at the Methodist Hospital.
