Thomas Clarke Wright, the second president of Otter Tail Power Company, was born on December 13, 1901, at South Lincoln, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He was the oldest son of Vernon Wright, the founder and first president of the company.

Wright attended a public school in South Lincoln until 1913 when his family moved to Minneapolis. There he attended Blake School. For his last two years of high school he went to Phillips Academy at Andover Massachusetts. In 1921 he entered Harvard University, graduating in 1926 after completing a five-year course in electrical engineering and business administration.

After graduation Wright began his career with Otter Tail Power Company. He worked mainly on engineering and construction projects. In 1930 he took a year off to do postgraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

When he returned to the company, he became more and more involved in the financial side of the business. During the hard times of the 1930s, the company needed to refinance its outstanding securities to reduce the cost of borrowed capital. In the late 1930s and middle 1940s, the company had to raise new capital to finance several mergers and acquisitions. Finally, after World War II, the company had a tremendous demand for capital to build new generation and transmission facilities to serve a rapidly growing load. The company also needed to catch up on the maintenance and repair work that had been postponed during the war because of the shortage of men and materials. Wright was very much involved in all those financial activities.

In 1933 Wright succeeded his father as president and served until 1952 when he turned the office over to his younger brother Cyrus. Wright moved up to chairman of the board and held that position until 1961. He continued to serve on the board until 1964 but not as chairman.

Wright was much like his father. He was a quiet, soft-spoken person and very reserved. He was not comfortable in the limelight. He preferred to remain in the background.

One of his hobbies was photography. He developed, printed, and enlarged pictures in his own dark room to achieve the particular effect he was looking for. He had other interests that were more scholarly. One was archeology and the related studies of languages, religions, and philosophies associated with ancient cultures.  That gave him familiarity with the classical Greek and Hebrew languages. When time permitted he visited archeological sites he was interested in.

Thomas Wright died in Minneapolis on April 30, 1966, at the age of 64.

Written by Myron Broschat, Otter Tail Power Company retiree
References:  Otter Tail Power Company by Thomas Wright, Otter Tail County Historical Museum