Gas company pioneer Thornton dies at 94

Friday, Jan. 16, 1998 | 10:44 a.m.

On Aug. 7, 1940, Las Vegan Byron Thornton arrived in Salt Lake City to begin a vacation from his job of managing the Clark County Gas Co. when he heard a newsboy on a street corner, shout: "Family killed in Las Vegas, read all about it!"

Thornton was shocked to learn that Thomas H. Myers, owner of the rival Petrolane Gas Co., and his wife, Doris Thornton Myers -- Byron's sister -- were involved that day in a butane explosion at their 306 Gass Ave. home and factory.

Two Myers children died in the blast. Doris, Thomas and two more of their eight children, along with a neighbor's child, would die from injuries sustained in the accident.

A family man first, Thornton returned home immediately, only to learn that, because of the tragedy, Las Vegas was without gas to run cooling systems and cook meals. Without hesitating, Thornton drove the rival company's truck to Los Angeles and got the gas to help his late sister's family meet their responsibilities to Las Vegas.

Later that year, Thornton bought out his boss and, with his surviving nephew Thomas G. Myers, merged the companies to form Myers-Thornton Gas Co., which would serve Southern Nevada and Southern Utah until the mid-1950s.

Byron Orton Thornton, who would become a Mormon bishop and land developer for such projects as the old North Las Vegas City Hall on Civic Center Drive, died Monday at a local hospital from pneumonia. He was 94 and had been in good health until he fell at his residence earlier this month, his family said.

Services for the Las Vegas resident of 68 years were to be held today at the West Charleston Chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a facility he built in the mid-1950s. Interment will be 1 p.m. Saturday in Parowan, Utah.

"Last Saturday, my grandfather talked about how he wanted to leave the hospital and get home because there were so many chores he had to get done, including chopping wood," said Laura Gilbert. "All his life, he was a hard-working man."

Nedra Stephensen, Byron's daughter and Laura's mother, agreed, noting that people marveled at Byron's impressive strength and huge hands, upon which he wore just one piece of jewelry -- a size-12 pinkie ring his wife had given him many years ago.

"I once put that ring on my thumb and it fit so loosely," said Gilbert, no slouch herself at 5-foot-11 3 /4. "If he had gotten to go home, I suppose he would have held a cane in one hand and an ax in the other to chop that wood."

But, by Monday, pneumonia had set in and there was nothing the doctors could do. As many members of Thornton's large family gathered around his deathbed and said a prayer, Thornton fulfilled his last earthly goal -- to rejoin his wife of 60 years, Luella, who had died in 1991.

Luella Thornton, who was interred in a vault at Palm Mortuary -- one of the many that Byron had built during his days in the precast concrete business -- will be reinterred with her husband in the Parowan City Cemetery near the graves of Thornton's mother, father and other kin.

It was while working for his father that young, 6-foot-2 Byron was taught a strong work ethic. The eighth child of 14 and the youngest boy, Byron worked in his father's freight and sawmill businesses in the 1920s.

When he told his father, William Thornton, that he was going to look elsewhere for work, his dad remarked: "I'm going to have to hire three men to do your job."

In 1931, Thornton tried but failed to land a job constructing the Hoover Dam. Undaunted, he went to the Union Pacific Railroad to look for work.

"He got a job there because he could play basketball," Stephensen said. "He played for the company's team all over the West Coast. That's also how he had gotten a job at Kennecott Copper in Magna, Utah, where he met mom at a company dance in 1929."

While working for the railroad, Thornton helped build the Elgin Tunnels in Caliente.

In the early 1930s, he landed the job at the Clark County Gas Co., working for C.O. Lauritzen. He earned 75 cents an hour and lived with Luella, a licensed cosmetologist and beautician, in a rented cabin on 4th Street.

Under Thornton's leadership, Clark County Gas Co. grew. So did the rival business operated by his brother-in-law, who previously had worked for Lauritzen, but left to start Petrolane Gas.

Then came the disaster on a 110-degree day that rocked the then-small community of Las Vegas -- literally with the explosion and figuratively with the loss of members of one of the town's more prominent families.

Thomas G. Myers, then a teenager, took over the company after his father, mother and siblings, ages 2-18, were killed in what then-Gov. E. P. Carville declared was the worst family disaster in Nevada history.

Fearful that the city would not license a man so young to run such a dangerous business, Myers got together with Thornton who decided to quit his job and help his nephew.

When Thornton handed in his resignation, Lauritzen told him the company could not go on without him. So, he sold the business to Byron, who then merged with Myers to create what would become a local propane and butane gas empire.

During the above-ground nuclear test era of the 1950s, Thornton installed in houses at the Nevada Test Site propane tanks and appliances to help the government test whether they would explode during the detonations. None of them did.

In 1955, Myers and Thornton sold the gas business and Thornton went into concrete and land development.

The projects he would work on over the next several decades included North Las Vegas City Hall, the old Las Vegas Hospital on 8th Street, the Sky-Vue Apartments and Sky-Vue Trailer Park on Owens Avenue near Main Street and the Sunrise Terrace Mobile Home Park on Pecos Road and Lake Mead Boulevard.

But no project was more spiritually rewarding than the construction of the Mormon chapel. On Nov. 17, 1955, Thornton was appointed bishop of the newly-created Ninth Ward of the LDS Las Vegas Stake, of which Myers, who now is retired and living in Provo, Utah, was president. Ground was broken for the chapel 10 days later.

In his later years, Thornton managed his properties and supported numerous charities. He never retired.

Thornton also enjoyed spinning yarns -- entertaining his grandchildren and great-grandchildren with tales of his youth.

"All of the stories were true -- he didn't have to make them up," said Stephensen, whose husband Mark Stephensen is the owner of M.S. Concrete in Las Vegas.

Gilbert said one of her favorite stories that her grandfather told was how with a single blast from his shotgun he killed 12 ducks. With his dozen birds in hand, Byron rushed home to tell of that great feat only to receive even bigger news from his family -- the birth of his nephew, Thomas G. Myers.

In addition to his daughter and granddaughter, Thornton is survived by another daughter, LaVee Sorenson of Las Vegas; two sons, Byron Thornton and Grant Thornton, both of Las Vegas; three sisters, Neta Wells of Parowan, Harriett Hicks of Las Vegas and Afton Werner of Bountiful, Utah; 12 other grandchildren; and 13 great grandchildren.

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