Sam Wyly

Samuel Evans Wyly (born October 4, 1934) is an American businessman.

Sam Wyly was born in 1934, to parents Flora and Charles Wyly Sr. of Lake Providence, Louisiana.

His ancestors included Presbyterian and Episcopalian ministers, college founders, and teachers.

Wyly's paternal grandfather was a lawyer who managed plantation assets and helped poor Black convicts get paroled from Angola Prison.

His maternal grandfather was a doctor.

He began working at an early age, helping his parents publish a weekly newspaper titled The Delhi Dispatch in Richland Parish.

He sold advertising, wrote stories, sent telegrams for oil and gas workers, folded and addressed the finished papers, delivered daily newspapers from the bus stop on Highway 80, and cleaned the printing presses.

He spent his summers working in the Delhi Oil field.

Wyly attended Delhi High School, graduating in 1952.

During his senior year, he served as student body president.

He played nose guard on his high school football team.

Wyly attended Louisiana Tech University where he studied journalism and accounting.

During this time he sold class rings.

Wyly was elected class president and student senate president.

Wyly earned an MBA at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1957, where he chose the nickname "Sam".

After Michigan, Wyly went to Air Force Boot Camp in San Antonio and to Dallas for a job with IBM.

He and Ross Perot were classmates at IBM's education center.

Three and a half years later, Wyly left IBM for Honeywell, establishing their computer business in Dallas, Ft. Worth, and Oklahoma.

When Honeywell rejected his plan for a new technology computing center to replace the obsolete Univac at SMU, he quit.

In 1963 Wyly founded University Computing Company (UCC), to serve engineers, scientists, and researchers.

He capitalized the company with $1,000 and commitments from customers including Sun Oil Company, Texas Instruments and SMU, and $650,000 borrowed from the First National Bank in Dallas.

The company went public in September 1965, the month his twin daughters, Laurie and Lisa, were born.

In four years, UCC stock gained 100–1 over its IPO price.

Many employees and early investors became millionaires.

In 1967 he bought the ten-store restaurant chain Bonanza Steakhouse which served steak and potatoes and salad for $2.

Wyly ran TV ads using the actors who played "Hoss", "Little Joe" and "Pa Cartwright" from the TV series Bonanza.

Bonanza grew from 10 to 600 restaurants[3] when he sold it to John Kluge.

In 1968 he acquired Gulf Insurance to help fund his ambition of a nationwide digital network to compete with AT&T, then the national telephone monopoly.

Gene Bylinsky of Fortune wrote, "Sam Wyly builds a telephone company for computers."

In his 1968 keynote speech to the Spring Joint Computer Conference in Atlantic City, Wyly said, "The computer user has dialed into a Busy Signal.".

Also in 1968 he co-founded Earth Resources Company, an oil-refining and silver-mining company, that built a refinery in North Pole, Alaska to make jet fuel for airplanes flying to Asia over the Arctic Sea for overnight air mail delivery.

By 1969, it was one of only five companies headquartered in Texas with a market capitalization of $1 billion or more.

He first appeared on Forbes's list of richest Americans in 2000 with a net worth of $750 million, and he remained on that list throughout 2010 with a net worth of $1 billion.

His initial wealth was acquired following the public offering of University Computing Company.

His recent wealth stems from ownership stakes from Sterling Software and Michael's, an American art supply store.

Cheryl and Sam Wyly purchased Explore Booksellers and Bistro in January 2007.

Wyly's memoir, 1,000 Dollars & an Idea, was published in September 2008.

In 2010 following a series of investigations, Wyly was charged with federal tax fraud by the SEC and IRS.

His illustrated biography, Beyond Tallulah, How Sam Wyly Became America's Boldest Big-Time Entrepreneur, by Dennis Hamilton (Melcher Media) was published in 2011.

Following his settlement with federal authorities, and declared bankruptcy in 2014.