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Charles Blake Goddard

Class of
1956
Charles Blake Goddard

Charles Blake Goddard

“It was years before I knew what it meant to have cash in my pocket and to be without loans all the way from Texas to New York.”
Charles Goddard, 1955

Biography

Charles Blake Goddard was born on the family farm near Athens, Ohio, and learned early of the value, and impending success, of hard work. An experienced driller, he was only 17 when he headed for southeast Texas and the great Spindletop oil field. By 1912, he and several friends and businessmen had organized Humble Oil Company. Charles and his wife moved to Ardmore to direct the operation of the company in Oklahoma. In 1929, he retired from the company and became a successful independent oil contractor. Great wealth did not change his conservative lifestyle, but he invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospitals, colleges and other organizations. The Charles B. Goddard Foundation, established in 1958, contributed over $1 million for the construction of the Southern Oklahoma Memorial Hospital.

Fun fact

A portion of the first year of his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Nan Louise Biddle, was spent in a tent surrounded by a sea of oil field mud, which occasionally invaded the tent, from the Batson wildcat oil rig in San Augustine, Texas.

Oklahoma connections

Goddard came to Ardmore, Oklahoma in 1912 to head his Humble Oil Company operation in the state.

Hometown

Ardmore

Profession

Oilman

Presenter

Born

1880

Died

1959
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