The First 30 Years of Making It Possible: The Story of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation

By Sandy Cardin

The history of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation is a tale similar to many you have heard before: a young man born to modest, immigrant Jewish parents achieves great success in business and decides to devote substantial time and resources to philanthropy. He joins with his wife to form a family foundation that they hope wil

• Language: English
• Publisher: 30 Point Press
• Release date: Jul 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781732185531

Sandy Cardin

Sanford "Sandy" Cardin met Charles and Lynn Schusterman at a Jewish Funders Network conference in February 1994 and moved with his children to Tulsa a few months later. Over the course of the next 25 years, first as its executive director and later as its president, Sandy grew the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation from a single employee in a single office into a global enterprise with six locations in two countries and a team of more than 75 people. Sandy graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1978 and as a member of the Order of the Coif of the University of Maryland School of Law in 1981. He practiced law with his father and grandfather, and volunteered in his community alongside his parents, Jerome and Shoshana Shoubin Cardin, both of whom had strong Jewish identities and instilled in him a strong commitment to serving others. Sandy left the law and the business world in 1992 to become the Mid-Atlantic Regional Director of the Jerusalem Foundation, the position he held when he was recruited by the Schustermans. A frequent speaker and author of numerous articles on philanthropy, Sandy is widely recognized as a leader in the field. Among the boards on which he has served are the Council on Foundations, the National Center for Family Philanthropy and the Jewish Funders Network. Sandy lives in Queenstown, Maryland, with his wife and partner, Melody McCoy. The couple has four children.

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Chapter 1

Humble Beginnings

For years, Charles Schusterman could look out his 20th-floor office window in downtown Tulsa and see the spot on the city’s north side where he grew up. He would often take visitors to that window, point to where his childhood home used to be, and say, I guess I haven’t gone very far in life.

His old neighborhood had been razed years earlier to make way for public housing, but it formed the basis of Charles’ childhood and helped shape his views on philanthropy and commitment to others that would define his life as a philanthropist and businessman.

As a young man, Charles’ father, Sam, immigrated to the United States from Minsk, Belarus, and started a business selling used oil field pipe from a tin shack on the old Sapulpa Highway. Sam married Sarah Goldstein, whose parents had brought her as a child to Tulsa from Riga, Latvia. The couple bought a small wood-frame house, where they raised four children. Charles, the youngest, was born in 1935 and was given the Hebrew name Bezalel. The name was prophetic because in the Torah, Bezalel was a master artisan called upon to build a tabernacle for God in the world. Bezalel answered the call not only through his artistic skill but also by motivating others to contribute to a common goal that would strengthen and serve all Jews.

Charles and his siblings grew up in a humble but happy Orthodox Jewish home north of the Frisco railroad tracks that divided the area from downtown. The neighborhood was home to working-class families of different ethnicities, although much of the area was predominantly African-American. The nearby Greenwood District had once been the most affluent African-American community in the country, often referred to as Black Wall Street. In 1921 — 14 years before Charles was born — 35 blocks of its businesses and homes were burned during the infamous Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the bloodiest incidents of racial violence by whites against blacks in American history. The entire area suffered and was still recovering by the time Charles was born.

Tulsa’s Jewish community was small — about 2,400 people. (Today, the Jewish population of the entire state is less than 4,700.) The first Orthodox congregation, B’nai Emunah, traces its origins to a minyan — a quorum of at least 10 men — established by Latvian immigrants like Sarah’s family in 1903. The first synagogue was organized in 1914, and the first rabbi arrived three years later.

Steve Zeligson grew up with Charles and went to middle school and Central High School with him. Charles’ mother had no pretense whatsoever and his father was quiet, moderately successful, and both were very welcoming and warm, Steve recalled. It was a basic middle-class family.

At Central High School, young Charles spent his spare time on the cheerleading squad and dating — which he later described as time well spent. He was bright and did well at school, but he was more likely to be found playing poker in hopes of winning date money than studying. He was the first Jew in his chosen high school fraternity, and he also served as the Aleph Gadol (similar to president) of the local chapter of AZA (Aleph Zadik Aleph), the international Jewish boys youth group that is part of BBYO. Charles was comfortable balancing his Jewish heritage with the life of a typical high school student in Oklahoma, an approach he would carry into adulthood.

After high school, and without much forethought, Charles got in his car and drove 100 miles west to Norman, figuring he would enroll in the University of Oklahoma. He had not taken the proper entrance exams, let alone signed up for classes, but that didn’t deter him. As Steve recalls: He was always a real go-getter. He was a confident guy, not a braggy kind of guy. He quickly negotiated his way into school and began pursuing a petroleum engineering degree.

Unlike high school, at OU Charles channeled his passion for life into academics. He loved OU, and he became a huge fan of the football team, but he also excelled as a student and graduated with honors in 1958. He was recognized among the top 10 students as a freshman and a senior. Charles left school wanting to use his capabilities to create something meaningful.

When Charles was 19, his father died. Charles had been close to Sam, and the loss hit him hard. Being Sam’s son was a fundamental part of who Charles was, equal to his deep-rooted appreciation for being Jewish. The depth of his affection for his father is apparent in the name he would choose for his company in 1971 — Samson.

After graduation, Charles served a three-year stint in the Army at Fort Lee, Virginia. When he returned to Tulsa in 1961, he borrowed $30,000 from his mother to go into business with his brother. Building S&S Pipe and Supply, an oil field salvage business, demanded long hours, and Charles had little time for dating. When he did, work often got in the way, but he did manage to schedule a blind date with a woman that a friend had said he should meet. When he called Lynn Josey to arrange the details, she answered the phone and, thinking it was someone else, said hi instead of hello. Do you always say ‘hi’ to strangers? Charles asked. Lynn was instantly smitten. I almost knew then and there that I was going to fall in love with this guy, she said.

Then, on the night they were to go out, Charles became tied up on a big project. He was three hours late picking her up, but it didn’t change Lynn’s impression from their phone conversation. I just decided I was going to wait for him, she said. And at the end of the night I knew that I was going to marry this man.

On their second date, Charles took Lynn along as he knocked on doors of Jewish neighbors collecting pledges for the United Jewish Appeal, which helped people in need. Very early on, I knew that we both shared a love of taking care of people and making their lives better, Lynn said.

The sense of instant connection was mutual. Steve recalls getting a letter from Charles soon after. He writes to me: ‘I've just been seeing a wonderful girl from Oklahoma City and we’re going to get married.’ It was clear he found his true happiness.

Lynn Josey was born in 1939 in Kansas City, Missouri, the oldest of three girls. Her mother, Amelia, was descended from German Jews who immigrated in the 1800s. Warm and creative, Amelia enjoyed gardening and indulging her artistic nature by designing and knitting clothes. Lynn and her sisters were raised by Amelia and their stepfather, Harold Josey, who served as the naval commander for the New Orleans Waterfront during World War II before moving to Oklahoma City to establish his own investment firm.

From an early age, he taught Lynn, whose nickname was Fireball, about giving back. When she was about 5 years old, she began accompanying him every Saturday and Sunday to visit widowed and divorced women, many of whom didn’t have cars and needed help with their finances. Some didn’t know how to write checks. Often, the Joseys would take the women who didn’t drive to the grocery store or run other errands for them. Sometimes they would bring them flowers.

That’s how I got involved in giving back to others, because my step-dad — I really call him my dad because he is the one who raised me — had a philosophy that those who had so much needed to share with others, Lynn said.

Lynn did not grow up in a religious household. Although she went to Temple B'nai Israel regularly and was confirmed, her family also celebrated Christmas and Easter, as did many German Jews at the time.

Unlike Charles, Lynn struggled with her heritage growing up, especially in grade school. There were two Jewish girls in her class and only three Jewish boys. Oklahoma City was beset by anti-Semitism, and young Lynn was often taunted and chased home from school.

I was really alone in my class, she said. I was very, very conscious of being Jewish. Later on, in junior high and high school, all of the social clubs and things were closed to anyone who was Jewish. So, it was hard and not very pleasant.

Fortunately, Lynn loved learning, so the taunting didn’t taint her view of school, and she drew strength from her parents. She went on to study at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Like Charles, she had a love of history and a sense of adventure.

Before long, Charles and Lynn were engaged. In those days, religious intolerance existed even within the Jewish community — German and Russian Jews had little interaction. When Lynn’s mother learned of her daughter's engagement to an Orthodox Russian Jew, she took to her bed. The rabbi at the temple in Oklahoma City, which was German Reform, wouldn’t allow a chuppah — the traditional wedding canopy — or the breaking of the glass at the end of the ceremony and forbade Charles from wearing a yarmulke. It was almost like I was marrying outside of the faith, Lynn recalled. Eventually, Lynn’s mother came around, and in 1962, a year after they first met, the couple was married in a small ceremony in the Joseys’ backyard. Lynn’s mother knew that Charles’ family kept kosher, and to her, kosher meant fish. We had shrimp, lobster, and crab, all of which are trayf (not kosher), and Charles’ family was not able to eat any of it, Lynn said.

The couple survived the culinary confusion and settled into a two-room duplex in Tulsa. Charles was working in the oil field salvage business with his brother, and Lynn spent much of her time volunteering. One of her first experiences was working with the National Council of Jewish Women to help abused children at an emergency shelter run by the Tulsa Police Department. Seeing the children’s plight resonated with her and would help shape many of her later philanthropic efforts in the prevention of child abuse and neglect.

They built a close network of friends. Charles had a circle of buddies from OU, many of whom married women from other places and, like Lynn, settled in Tulsa. With few other friends and little family nearby, the couples became close.

Life was good and, within the next 10 years, was about to become better than anyone could have ever imagined.

Chapter 2

A Big Bet

The 1960s were tough not just for Israel, but for the oil business as well. The market for used oil field equipment fluctuated with oil prices, which fell during most of the decade as the major oil companies began developing big new fields overseas. By the late 1960s, oil imports had risen to the point that they threatened to outpace domestic production. That made growing S&S Pipe and Supply difficult for the Schusterman brothers, who had started buying depleted wells in Kansas, mostly for the salvage value of the equipment.

Once they bought the properties, however, they changed their minds. Rather than plugging the wells and selling off the equipment, they decided to overhaul them — known in the business as a workover — and they boosted their production enough to sell the oil at a profit. Charles personally borrowed funds to finance these transactions on the company’s behalf, and Lynn often co-signed on the notes. The family’s finances, in other words, were completely tied up in the business.

By the end of the decade, Charles became convinced that he could make more money buying oil production than the scrap pipe used by producers. He did a tremendous amount of reading and research, Lynn said. He had the foresight. But he was a huge gambler.

Those early wells made Charles look more closely at the oil market from a producer’s viewpoint. He noticed that world oil demand was beginning to outstrip supply. No major untapped oil fields were believed to remain in the United States, and the cost of drilling new wells was too high to make a profit at $3.20 a barrel.

It looked to me like the price was going to go up, he said. So, I decided to make a big bet.

In 1971, Amerada Hess, a large, family-run oil concern based in New York, was looking to sell some old, marginally producing wells in California. By this time, Charles and Lynn had three young children — Hal, Stacy and Jay — a new home, and the growing responsibilities of running a business. Charles would be putting their future on the line, but he decided the opportunity was worth it. He set up a new company to buy the properties, and Lynn helped come up with the name: Samson Resources Company. Partly, the name came from his father, Sam — Charles was Sam’s son, after all — and partly from the biblical Israelite judge commonly recognized as a symbol of strength. The timing of the deal was fortuitous.

While waiting for a late afternoon flight in the San Francisco airport in October 1973, Charles called his office to check in. Oil prices had tripled. OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, curtailed oil production to protest America’s support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War (the Arab-Israeli conflict that came six years after the Six-Day War). Before the embargo was over, crude prices would surge from $3 a barrel to $30. For the first time in my career, I would have extra funds, Charles said.

Samson used the windfall from soaring oil prices to redeploy capital to new drilling programs. Just as Charles had anticipated the rise in oil prices, he foresaw a similar increase for natural gas. As Samson’s cash flow grew from the wells in Kansas and California, it began buying natural gas properties in southeastern Oklahoma. The company later expanded to the southwestern part of the state and the Texas Panhandle.

In 1978, Congress deregulated interstate prices for natural gas, which triggered a boom in both prices and production, just as Charles predicted. But the higher prices for both oil and gas ultimately created a glut, and by the mid-1980s, prices had plunged. Oil fell as low as $9 a barrel. The declines routed the industry, and dozens of producers and drilling contractors went bankrupt. Samson was losing money and had to lay off half its employees. All new drilling ground to a halt.

When the bust hit in the 1980s, the company was in a far better position than many of its competitors. Charles had hired Phil Tholen in 1977 and put him in charge of marketing Samson's increasing natural gas production. Tholen, working with Richard Williford and Charles, negotiated new terms for Samson’s gas contracts that locked in minimum prices and production volumes. This would protect Samson's cash flow when prices plunged.

These contracts were extremely important to the company after pricing and sales volumes collapsed, Phil said. Not surprisingly, pipeline companies sued to get out of the contracts, which forced them to pay rates that by then were above the prevailing market prices. More than 50 of Samson’s contracts were litigated, but the company prevailed, receiving more than 90 percent of the contracted value — a critical source of cash when other producers no longer could sell their gas profitably. (Natural gas prices didn’t recover until the early 2000s.)

Despite his foresight in protecting the company from a gas price decline, Charles and the Samson team had work to do. Charles had financed Samson’s drilling growth through about $100 million worth of personal bank loans, and with interest rates rising and energy prices falling, that had to be paid down. Samson was no longer able to obtain financing from outsiders through the limited partnerships it had used to finance its early growth. I told Charles, ‘This company is too large to operate on that basis,’ Phil said. A restructuring was required. Samson steadily paid off the bank debt, and Charles was never again required to personally guarantee Samson’s