Alex Lepe, Fort Worth Inc., 2016
Dick Lowe, 2016
Dick Lowe, the legendary Texas oil and gas wildcatter who was busted in his 60s and then went on to rip off deals for more than $1 billion in the Barnett Shale, died. He was 92.
Lowe, who played football for Dutch Meyer at TCU, was the Frog booster who took the fall for a band of unnamed Horned Frog backers who got caught paying off recruits in the mid-1980s. Years later, Lowe and business partner Hunter Enis wrote a check for $15 million to help seed fundraising for the first phase of renovations to TCU’s Amon Carter Stadium.
“The TCU athletics community is incredibly saddened by the passing of Dick Lowe,” Jeremiah Donati, the TCU athletic director, said in a statement Sunday.
“As a standout student-athlete during a memorable era in our program’s history and as a generous supporter after his playing days were over, there are few who have had a similar impact at their respective institutions. If there is someone more knowledgeable and passionate about TCU football, I have not met them.”
Lowe and Enis put together two deals for $1 billion in asset sales in the Barnett Shale at the peak of the natural gas leasing boom. Subsequently, Lowe had a minority interest in a third sale, for $225 million, of Barnett Shale assets assembled by his son Brad Cunningham.
Known as a direct, fearless and persistent negotiator, Lowe told Fort Worth Inc. in a 2016 interview he had a simple strategy for the times he went broke.
“Quit drinking, quit eating bad food, exercise rigorously, walk every day, think about nothing but making money,” he told the magazine. “The only stress I had was I was broke. I didn’t have other forces working against me. “People who go broke and start feeling sorry for themselves are screwed.”