Jim L. Hanna Friends, fun focus for businessman

— Every morning for 50 years, Jim L. Hanna would meet with a group of friends for breakfast in downtown Fort Smith, his daughter Kim Behrend said.

“They’d sit and laugh, read the paper and played liar’s poker with dollar bills,” she said.

Hanna’s sense of camaraderie helped make the Hanna Oil & Gas company the ninth-largest natural gas producer in Arkansas, according to the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission.

Hanna died Monday from complications from Parkinson’s disease at Peachtree Hospice in Fort Smith. He was 76.

Born on Dec. 21, 1933 in Vernon, Texas, to Lynn and Juanita Hanna, he was raised in Wichita Falls as an only child. He graduated from Wichita Falls High School in 1953 and from North Texas State College - known today as University of North Texas - in 1957 with a business degree, Behrend said.

After college, Hanna began working for the Bridwell Oil Company as a landman, someone who is responsible for “buying up leases and tracks of land for oil and gas exploration” his daughter said.

He was transferred in 1961 to Fort Smith where he opened an office. A year later, Hanna used his own money to form the Arkoma Basin Royalty company - renamed Hanna Oil & Gas in 1969 - Behrend said.

Hanna slowly added personnel and started general limited partnerships from 1969 to 1971. He built up his equities and soon became a drill operator, the largest at the time being the Lincoln-#2 well in Crawford County in 1972, Behrend said. Owned by the late Ruth Lincoln - U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s grandmother-in-law - the well had the largest calculated open flow in the state with 90 million cubic feet of gas per day, Behrend said.

The company also started oil exploration in Alberta,Canada, in 1987.

The company now has about 500 operating wells in Canada and 2,000 throughout Arkansas and Oklahoma, his son and the company’s current president, Bill Hanna, said.

Jim Hanna’s other son, Mike Hanna, said his father considered work more of a hobby.

“He had the ability to treat his business somewhat as a lifestyle instead of a business,” he said. “Everything that he did was directed around having fun, being honest and that the money he made in Arkansas stayed in Arkansas.”

After being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2006, the elder Hanna remained chairman of the board, serving alongside Mike Hanna and Behrend. He named Bill Hanna president in 2000, Behrend said.

Jim Hanna was involved in several charitable and civic organizations, including chairman of United Way and a board member for the Boys and Girls Club in Fort Smith. He also donated $1 million from Hanna Oil & Gas paid over five years to The Family Enterprise Center in the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith’s College of Business in 2006, according to the university.

“He said everyone had talent and the spark, they just needed a little kindling and Daddy really wanted to do that with people,” Behrend said.

Whether he was running the company or playing golf, Behrend said Hanna lived to encourage people. Behrend recalled one time she was playing golf with her father and was nervous about making a shot over a water hazard.

“He came up behind me and whispered in my ear, ‘Knock the hell out of it.’ I knocked that ball straight over that pond and almost into the hole,” Behrend said. “There’s just something about him that instilled confidence and made you do things you never thought you could do.”

Arkansas, Pages 14 on 07/22/2010

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