John Thurman Oxley (July 26, 1909 - September 19, 1996) was an American businessman and polo player.Tulsa Historical Society biography
/ref>
/ref>Steve Liewer
Boca Polo Club's John Oxley Dies
'' Sun Sentinel'', September 21, 1996''Tulsa World'' September 21, 1996 obituary "Philanthropist John Oxley Dies"
Retrieved October 7, 2018

Biography

Early life

John Thurman Oxley was born on a cattle farm near Bromide, Oklahoma in 1909. He moved to

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

at the age of seventeen.

Career

In 1935, he started his career at Warren Petroleum, and by 1948 he was secretary to the corporation. He started his own company, Texas Natural Gasoline Corporation and sold it in 1961 to start an exploration company, Oxley Petroleum, with his older son, John C. Oxley. They specialized in natural gas. He sold it to the Allied Corporation (itself later acquired by

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...

Polo

He took up polo at the age of 46. He won two

U.S. Open Polo Championship The US Open Polo Championship is an annual polo championship in the United States. It is organized since 1904 by the United States Polo Association (USPA). History The tournament was first played on September 20, 1904 at Van Cortlandt Park in T ...

s, the USPA Rolex Gold Cup and Silver Cup, the Monty Waterbury Cup, the Sunshine League many times, and twenty-seven medium-goal championships. He won the International Gold Cup at 83, the oldest player to do so. He owned the Royal Palm Polo Club in

Boca Raton, Florida Boca Raton ( ; es, Boca Ratón, link=no, ) is a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It was first incorporated on August 2, 1924, as "Bocaratone," and then incorporated as "Boca Raton" in 1925. The population was 97,422 in the ...

. He also owned Greenhill Farm, one of the largest commercial producers of polo ponies in the United States, near Owasso, Oklahoma.

Legacy

He is a 2003 honoree of the Hall of Fame of the Tulsa Historical Society. He was inducted into the Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame on March 17, 1994. The Mary K. Oxley Nature Center, a wildlife preserve in Mohawk Park, Tulsa, is named for his late wife.

Personal life

He was married to his wife, Mary, from 1935 until her death in 1987. They went horseriding and played polo together. They spent the winter season living in Delray Beach, Florida and the rest of the year their home in Tulsa. One of their sons, Thomas, also played polo, and nearly died from a brain stem injury in 1968, when he lay unconscious for 31 days. They had another son, John C. Oxley, also a polo player, and a daughter, Mary Jane Tritsch.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oxley, John T. 1909 births 1996 deaths American businesspeople in the oil industry Sportspeople from Tulsa, Oklahoma Sportspeople from Daytona Beach, Florida American polo players 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American philanthropists