Remember Henry Salvatori's Contributions

There's a masterful new book out about conservative think tanks and their fund raisers. It's called Funding Fathers: The Unsung Heroes of the Conservative Movement by Ron Robinson and Nicole Hoplin. Henry Salvatori is one of the funders mentioned.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about making Claremont McKenna "sustainable." Much of that discussion is really anti-capitalist and economic freedom as it is opposed to all pollution. Such argument is really Marxist in its critique of capitalism and as such it is ignorant of the history of oil entrepreneurs like Henry Salvatori who made the world a much better, richer place.

I happen to make a few bucks here and there from the Henry Salvatori Center where I am a research assistant. And so it is only fitting that we know who this great may is so that we might better serve his mission.

Please allow me to quote from p. 124 to 128,

Henry Salvatori grew up in Pennsylvania with immigrant parents. He had been born outside of Rome, Italy, on March 28, 1901, and moved to Pittsburgh when he was five years old. His father built a successful wholesale grocery business in Philadelphia in 1903, three years before bringing the rest of the family across the Atlantic. The family knew very little English in those early days, but they lived on a farm close to Italian immigrant friends, so the transition was gentle. Salvatori later recalled, "In some indefinable way those early days on the farm served to shape my character, basic nature, and even my philosophical outlook." A one-room schoolhouse was the facility for Henry's first two years of schooling. Soon thereafter, the family moved to Florence, New Jersey, where he completed grammar school. After barely settling, the family packed its belongings and moved to Martins Ferry, Ohio, for one year, followed by another transition to Philadelphia. Salvatori attended and graduated from South Philadelphia High School in 1919 while working at his father' grocery business on the side.
Advanced education was a priority for Henry Salvatori. He was an aspiring scientist and put his knack for inquiry to work at the University of Pennsylvania, where he acquired his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering in 1923. When a job with Bell Telephone Laboratories opened in New York, Henry jumped at the chance to earn a living and take part in its education programs for young engineers. As part of his work, he attended classes on scholarship at Columbia University three times a week until he received a master of science degree in physics.
On his last day of class in 1926, Henry walked by a bulletin board hanging in the phyics building. After passing it once, his curiosity conquered him, and he turned around to glance at it once more. This time, he considered the posting: "Wanted. Men with graduate work in physics to do research work in Oklahoma -- if interested see Prof. Wells." Henry Salvatori was satisfied at Bell Telephone. It was an impressive company and had the largest lab in the country with upward mobility opportunities. Yet the thought of the "Wild West" sparked the adventuresome graduate, and he made that visit to Professor Wells's office to get more information. After much prodding by the president of Geophysical Research Corp., Salvatori joined the small lab's Newark office.
Salvatori excelled at Geophysical because of his inventiveness. He produced a borehole differential thermometer that could read temperatures within 1/1000 of a degree, a steep improvement from the 1/100 of a degree accuracy the previous model held. Shortly after, Henry went to Tulsa in charge of a crew to determine exact depths for oil exploration. This "reflection method" had not been used by any other company at that time and still stands today as the industry standard-bearer. Salvatori continued to lead teams to develop this breakthrough technology, pinpoint oil reserves with great accuracy, and eventually purchased stock and worked for a new company, Geophysical Science Inc. (GSI). GSI prospered because of its revolutionary techniques, even through the country's difficult economic times. By the 1950s, the company had become the largest geophysical contractor.
Salvatori resigned from GSI in 1933 while leading a crew in California. He was thirty-two year old and faced unemployment rates of nearly 25 percent, but he wanted to plant his own roots entrepreneurially. On August 15, 1933, Henry Salvatori started Western Geophysical. With an initial investment of $9,000, he acquired a small shop at 950 South Flower Street in Los Angeles to house the three-man, one-truck enterprise. Salvatori built and equipped his only truck in six weeks at his home. Turning up his nose at the economic current around him, Salvatori worked fifteen hour days to build the company to ten crews in five states by the end of that first year. By 1936, it was the second largest seismic contractor to GSI in locating oil and gas around the globe, and by 1955, the company became the world's largest offshore seismic contractor, present in twenty-six nations.
As a bachelor, Henry's life couldn't have been more exciting --traveling the Wild West and experiencing a business breakthrough. His life changed one day when he visited Tulsa, Oklahoma, on a business trip. Salvatori met the talkative and outgoing Grace Ford at a dance. Grace, a beautiful ballet teacher, has been born and raised in the Tulsa area. While the two made an impression on each other, it wasn't until months later that they truly got to know one another better. MGM requested Grace Ford's ballet class to audition for a movie in Los Angeles. According to daughter Laurie, while Grace traveled only to chaperone her students, MGM actually tapped her for a part in Lionel Barrymore's first horror movie, The Devil Doll. While in LA, Grace phoned Salvatori to indicate she was in the area, but also conveyed she would be far too busy with rehearsals to see him. Early the next morning, a single red rose appeared at her hotel room. Fifteen minutes later, yet another arrived. And fifteen minutes after that, another, until her room was filled with roses. Grace's aunt Eula escorted the couple to dinner at a Mexican restaurant the following night. Grace Ford and Henry Salvatori married in November 1937, the same year in which Western Geophysical branched out to include oil exploration of the Texas coast.
Their two children, Laurie Ann and Henry Ford, grew up in a beautiful, custom-built home on Bellagio Road in Bel Air, neighbors to Bill and Betty Wilson (Bill Wilson later became the first U.S. ambassador to the Vatican under Ronald Reagan). . . . Henry Salvatori also involved himself in causes near and dear to his heart.
Salvatori had grown up in a conservative household. His younger brother, William Howard, had in fact been named so by his Republican father during William Howard Taft's presidential term. Salvatori had long repudiated the Rooseveltian welfare state and instead embraced the capitalistic free-market approach to solving societal ills. His entrepreneurial advances had helped California's postwar boom, and he realized that the opportunity to innovate free from big government's intervention was the key to American strength.
Henry Salvatori loved America. He also knew that America would be shaped by her prevailing ideas and wanted it to remain "the light of the world." By the 1940s, Communism and the creation of the United Nations caused Henry much consternation but spurred him to action no less. "It was only in the 1940s when I became concerned with the Communist threat to the free world that I began to take an interest in politics." He continued, "I was in San Francisco during the formation of the United Nations. I believed then that it was a mistake, and I thought the Democratic Party was totally unaware of the future threat of Communist Russia." His sweeping opposition to Communism pushed him to make several dramatic moves. He created the Anti-Communism Voters League in the 1950s to evaluate all candidates for office on their awareness off the Communist threat. He gave $1 million to the University of Southern California to create the Research Institute of Communist Strategy and Propaganda in 1960. He then backed the original issues of William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review and supported the American Security Council to fight the Soviet advance outside of the United States.
Most notably, however, by 1949 Henry was becoming more and more involved in political campaigns. He volunteered to be the Los Angeles County finance chairman for the Republican Party, California state finance committee chairman in 1951, and in 1952, Henry became fully engaged in Dwight Eisenhower's presidential campaign. President Eisenhower disappointed Salvatori on a philosophical level; Ike hasn't been as conservative as Salvatori had hoped, and Salvatori viewed the party leadership as a large part of the problem.
He loved America and opposed Communism so much that by 1960, while his company led the field on an international scale, he was ready to take his earnings and become an advocate for the principles that brought him success. Dr. Larry Arnn, professor at California's Claremont Institute at the time, believed that Salvatori's "love of country was pure, selfless, and intelligent."
Year after year, Salvatori watched his party's eastern establishment shrug at centralizing state power with little regard. When 1964 approached, he became fully involved to change his party's leadership and volunteered to be Barry Goldwater's California finance chairman for his presidential bid. That campaign was a new style of conservatism, calling out the establishment leaders who consistently compromised with big government. He fervently supported Goldwater as opposed to the East-Coast candidate with well-endowed coffers, Nelson Rockefeller. His ultimate goal was to find replacements for what he saw as the sellout leaders of the Grand Old Party.
Henry's penchant for politics surpassed his desire to commit any more time to Western Geophysical. He recognized the opportunities that had been afforded to his immigrant family, and he was eager to give back to the country he cherished. As such, he encouraged Litton Industries to take over stock ownership of his company so that he could focus more of his energy on advocating for the ideas that he had come to admire. Salvatori retired as CEO in 1967 to devote his full attention to conservative causes.

There's much more where that came from, particularly related to how Salvatori served as part of Ronald Reagan's "Kitchen Cabinet" and how he effectively made Reagan's career, but that'll have to wait for another day.