Like most high achievers, Frank Phillips was successful in more ways than one.

At the age of 14, Frank headed into Creston, Iowa, a small town near to the farm where he was raised, looking for work. The owner of the Climax Barber Shop, located in the basement of the bank in Creston took Frank on as an apprentice.

Frank’s career as a barber moved quickly. He was a fast learner and had a knack for impressing the right people. He wore fancy, striped trousers and offered fat cigars to his customers. He attracted an impressive range of clients, including the leading banker, John Gibson. Ten years after starting as an apprentice barber, Frank Phillips owned all three of Creston’s barber shops and had married the banker’s daughter, Jane Gibson!

In 1905 Frank and his brother L.E. Phillips were attracted to the Bartlesville, Oklahoma area, by the oil boom and working on their last chance to drill an “oil gusher.” The Anna Anderson oil well came through, as did the next 80 wells they drilled, and in 1917 Frank and L.E. Phillips founded the Phillips Petroleum Company.

Today the company is known as Conoco Phillips and has a headquarters office in Bartlesville and a delightful museum detailing the history of their company and what it has transformed into over the decades.

An exhibit in the Conoco Phillips museum in Bartlesville, near where we have been staying the last few days.