Thomas Elmer Braniff
His father was an early pioneer settler in Kansas having moved to the region from the Altoona, Pennsylvania area where he was a farmer.
Tom's family was of Irish ancestry, with his grandfather Patrick Braniff, having migrated to the United States from Ireland in approximately 1800.
Thomas Elmer Braniff was not to remain in his father's insurance business for long choosing instead to create his own agency.
Oklahoma, known for its violent tornadoes, spawned a twister that wiped out the fledgling agency as well as the insurance company that had to pay the claims.
The claims were too numerous for the agency or the insurance company to survive and Tom Braniff had to start over.
[3] At the age of 18 in 1901, Tom returned to his home of Oklahoma City and founded a partnership with Frank Merrill.
Thurman was killed in a training aircraft crash at Oklahoma City in 1938 and Jeanne Braniff died while giving childbirth ten years later in 1948.
By this point Braniff had created one of the most successful insurance firms in the Southwest and was well known for a creative plan that involved using surety bonds to guarantee first-mortgage debt.
[1] In 1927, Tom Braniff joined forces with several investors and created Oklahoma Aero Club.
In 1929, Paul R. Braniff, Inc. was sold to Universal Aviation Corporation to form a group of companies to operate transcontinental airmail network.
As a result of this, Tom started the B Line Club in major cities and offered only 100 shares to each possible investor.
[4] Tom Braniff set up B Line Clubs in Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, and Austin.
In a very brief period Braniff had procured 21 members in his moderate risk airline investment group in Kansas City alone.
The offering was not made via a Wall Street banking firm but by a Washington DC banker by the name of Ferdinand Eberstadt.
[7] On Sunday, January 10, 1954, Thomas Elmer Braniff was killed in a private plane crash in Louisiana.
Tom Braniff, along with nine other noted businessmen from Texas and Louisiana, were on a duck hunting trip sponsored by United Gas Corporation.
The group was traveling aboard a Grumman Mallard twin-engine aircraft and encountered severe icing while on the return trip home from Grand Chenier.
The pilot, Bobby Huddleston, who was employed by United Gas, tried desperately to save the aircraft but was unable to maintain altitude due to the fast-accumulating ice on the wings and fuselage.
[8] The pilot instructed the co-pilot to radio Shreveport that they would try to land the aircraft at nearby Wallace Lake.
At 5:50 PM the Grumman Mallard carrying Thomas Elmer Braniff crashed short of its intended emergency landing spot, into the wooden cabins of a fishing camp that was located on the north shore of Wallace Lake.
