Todd Aaron, Midland, TX

1911-2005

Inducted 2003

A native of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, Todd Aaron attended both the University of Oklahoma and Northwestern University in Illinois, receiving his B.S. degree in Commerce in 1933. Back in Oklahoma, he worked for Gulf Oil, National Bank of Tulsa and Phillips Petroleum. A move to Odessa, Texas in 1938 led him to a job with a company that fractured oil wells with nitroglycerin. After serving in the Navy during World War Il, Aaron returned to Odessa and started his own oil well drilling business. He found a niche for his cable tool drilling rigs with the early ’50s discovery of the Spraberry Trend. In later booms, when the wait for a rotary rig could be a year, his rigs were available, even if simply to drill surface holes to hold a lease that was about to expire.