Horace LeConey was born in 1918 in Saranac Lake, NY. Both his parents had tuberculosis and met at the TB sanatorium in Saranac Lake. Horace was their first and only child. His mother died when he was two years old, and because his dad was still sick, he was shipped around to live with relatives for the next 10 years.
When his dad recovered, he remarried and moved to Black Mountain, NC for the "healthful mountain climate." His first wife's' family had connections that got him a job with Standard Oil. It was 1930, and times were very hard.
Horace graduated from high school at age 14. His parents decided that he was too young to go to college, so they sent him to a little Junior College in nearby Asheville, NC. He always told a story (with obvious glee) about how he used to "hop a freight train" to get from Black Mountain to Asheville.
After graduation he went to NC State for a BS in Engineering and then earned a fellowship for a MS in Engineering at Virginia Tech. In 1938 he used his Mom's family's "connections" at Standard Oil to get a job as a salesman for Standard Oil in Virginia.
When WW II broke out, he volunteered, was commissioned as a Naval Officer and sent to New Orleans LA. There he met Elizabeth Kernion, a girl from an old New Orleans family. Horace and Elizabeth were married in 1942 and Mike LeConey was born in 1943, the first of four sons. In 1942 Horace was sent to Trinidad to work with the British Navy which had a large refinery on the Island.
When Horace retired from Standard Oil in 1982, he was the Marketing Vice President for the Western US. His life can be described as a "success story" of the "greatest generation". He survived the Depression, WW II and was very much a part of the generation of "very tough" men who came back from WW II and made the USA the "standard of the world".
His sons have a total of 6 children and all except Mike live in Texas.
Biography contributed by Mike Le Coney.