Charles Brady Grant BSPE '42
Charles Brady Grant was born Oct 5, 1920, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the oil boom. His father was director of the bank and his motherʼs family, the Hamilton Bradys, had come from Pennsylvania to look for oil. Grant’s only sibling, Louis Wesley Grant, Bud, was born in 1925.
Grant graduated from Tulsa High School in 1938, and family friend Mac McCullum, President of Carter Oil, a division of Standard Oil Petroleum recommended Grant to attend the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from UT Austin with his Bachelors of Science in Petroleum Engineering in 1942, and was offered an opportunity to work for Warren Petroleum making 100-octane fuel for the country’s war effort. He worked for six months and then decided to go into the military, joining the Army Air Corps, on December 1, 1942—just days before Pearl Harbor. As part of his military training, Grant went to Yale University’s Engineering School to study air craft maintenance. In 1944, Grant was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. He then served in Pyote, Texas, and was one of three officers to be in charge of maintenance on B-29 Bombers.
When World War II ended, Grant returned to Tulsa and went to work as a real estate appraiser for Sooner Home Federal Savings and Loan, which eventually became the largest savings and loan in Oklahoma. He married Marilyn Vinson and went to work for her father Bailey Vinson where he worked for 12 years at Vinson Supply. He and Marilyn had three daughters: Jeanne Dillingham, Kathy Grant, and Chrissy Trotter.
Grant went to Harvard Executive Business Management School and graduated in 1958. While at Harvard, Bailey Vinson had obtained an oil country tubular account from U.S. Steel Corp. Grant managed the account and doubled the sales volume of Vinson Supply. After divorcing from Marilyn in 1960, Grant could no longer work for Vinson and quit. Bailey Vinson asked Grant what he
was going to do; he said, quoting Ulysses S. Grant, “I am going to cut my supply lines and forage on the country.”
So in December 1960, Grant formed Grant Supply Company with seven employees including himself. Their motto was “People Who Care.” When he sold his corporation in 1990, he had 1700 employees with five different companies in the corporation: Grant Oil Country Tubular Corporation, Houston, Texas; Grant Supply Company, Houston, Texas; Grant Corporation LTD, Fribourg, Switzerland; Tubular Finishing Works Inc, Navasota, Texas; Grant Corporation S.A., Calgary, Canada.
In 1976, while traveling by train from Juarez to Mexico City, Grant met Mona M. Moya. They married in 1982, and continued traveling throughout Mexico on his private rail car, entertaining business customers wherever the tracks went. Mona, who received a BA in Spanish and a PhD in Bilingual Education from the University of Colorado, has three children, including: Roxanne Marie Moya- Nasalroad and Lawrence Paul Moya. She also has three grandchildren: Wesley W. Moya, Carrie May Moya and Catherine Marie Bean.
In 1996, they bought a beach house in Kino Bay, Sonora, Mexico on the Sea of Cortez—a small fishing village with no tourism so the water is clean and there are thousands of birds, fish, and porpoises. They now split their time between Kino Bay and Denver, Colorado.
A longtime supporter of The University of Texas at Austin, Grant established the Charles B. Grant Endowment in Engineering in 1990.
