Samuel H. Bennion Athletic

SAMUEL H. BENNION
Pocatello — Idaho State University will confer an honorary doctorate on Samuel H. Bennion, highly-successful Idaho businessman and generous supporter of ISU, during the 1998 ISU Commencement ceremonies on May 16.2005.
Bennion will receive the honorary doctor of laws degree from ISU.
Samuel Horne Bennion built a small gas station business in Pocatello into a multi-state, multi-million-dollar oil and gas operation, the Idaho Falls-based V-1 Oil Co.
Bennion attended the University of Utah, where he was a successful track star. The habits he learned as a sprinter, taking stock of the competition, getting a strong start, and running hard, have served him well in the business world.
Starting with one Blue Bell gasoline station in Pocatello, Bennion took off running and has not looked back since 1937. He saw Depression-era America as a nation about to have a romance with the gasoline engine. Events proved him right.
During gas-hungry World War II, Bennion concentrated his retailing efforts in Idaho Falls and began hauling gas from Western refineries to high-demand markets. When the war ended, he worked seven days a week to build his empire into nine stations and nine tanker trucks. He left Blue Bell and founded V-1 Oil, and its now-familiar rocket logo took off. The red and yellow signs of the company reputed to sell “better gas for less” quickly spread across Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.
To spend more time with his family, in the early 1950s the 39-year-old Bennion
“retired” to a real estate business in California. But three weeks later, he changed his mind. He returned to his oil business in Idaho and vowed never to retire again.
Today, having added a refinery to his empire, Bennion is producing gasoline, kerosene and fuel oil at Glen Rock, Wyo. V-1 and its fleet of 140 trucks has grown to more than 40 retail outlets in six Western states. The company has some 260 employees. At 83, Bennion still goes to the office almost every day.
Bennion over the years has been one of ISU’s most generous supporters. Beginning in 1952, the first year he sponsored the Bennion Awards Banquet to recognize student-athletes, his lucrative oil and gas business has powered many ISU projects, including substantial support of Holt Arena, the Bennion Games (now the Simplot Games), physical facilities, academic programs and scholarships.
One of his most recent gifts to ISU is also a gift to the city of Idaho Falls. The donation enabled ISU to purchase a 10.4-acre site allowing a student union building to be constructed adjacent to the ISU/University of Idaho Center for Higher Education. The facility will serve the more than 2,000 students who attend classes in Idaho Falls. Bennion believes in returning to Idaho a portion of the wealth with which he and his family have been blessed during the five decades they have been in business here.
“I’ve made a lot of money in Idaho,” Bennion has said. “Idaho has been very good to me.”
Bennion has five children, Sandra Truex, Kriss Pedersson, Mark Bennion, Julie Mertlich, and Patti Eaton, 22 grandchildren, and 15 great grandchildren, several of whom have attended ISU.