Hoyt, Willson Thomas (W. Thomas)
(CTR, President, Executive Director 1954-1984) Previously with Hill & KnowltonBiographical Information:
Willson Thomas Hoyt headed the Tobacco Industry Research Council/Council for Tobacco Research from its inception in 1954 until his retirement in February of 1984. He used the professional name of W. Thomas Hoyt and was usually referred to by his colleagues as Tom or Thomas. This has contributed to substantial confusion about his correct name. For example, several books, including Allan Brandt's The Cigarette Century and The Cigarette Papers (by Stanton A. Glantz, John Slade, Lisa A. Bero, Peter Hanauer and Deborah E. Barnes), indicate that his first name was William, but as seen in the note below, this is incorrect.
Willson Thomas Hoyt was born to Francis and Edith Thomas Hoyt in Kansas City, Missouri, on August 28, 1907. His father, Francis Richard Hoyt, an electrical engineer by profession, was born in Cleveland on March 19, 1885, the son of Oregon native Wilson Dyer Hoyt (1859-1927) and his Ohio-born wife Idelle (1860-1948). The family settled in Atlanta, and Francis Hoyt studied at the University of Georgia. Around 1906 he married Edith Thomas, who was born in Toledo in December of 1884 to recent immigrants from Wales and grew up in Indianapolis. After Willson was born the couple moved from Missouri to Cleveland, where Francis Hoyt worked for the Simms Magneto Company. He also worked for the Falcon Cyclecar Company of Cleveland, at one point claiming to have designed the first cyclecar. In a December 11, 1918, letter to the State Department, written on the letterhead of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Francis Hoyt stated "In 1917, I volunteered for over-seas service with the American Expeditionary Forces and sailed for France the first of January of this year. On my return from France and relief from Military Service, it developed that it was to my decided interest to return to Europe. Through my Army Service I have been separated from my family the best part of the year and as I will remain abroad for a minimum period of an additional year, I earnestly request that my family be permitted to accompany me." Information on his WWI draft card states that Francis service was with the U.S. Army Air Force and in another letter written in December 1918 by his employer, J. B. DeBeltrand, the president of the Federal Adding Machine Corporation, states that Francis Hoyt was being sent to Europe with his wife and son to serve as the company's European Director.
A subsequent extended family trip to Europe in 1920 added to young Willson's continental exposure. Upon their return to the United States, his father wrote a book entitled Arise America!, in which he warned Americans that airships would change the way future wars were fought. By 1924, the Hoyts were living in Stamford, Connecticut. The 1930 census found Francis Hoyt living in Decatur, Georgia, with his widowed mother; he is listed as being married, but Edith was not with him. Francis Hoyt died in Decatur on September 16, 1939, while Edith passed away on September 26, 1960, and is buried in Indianapolis's Crown Hill Cemetery.
In 1924 Willson Thomas Hoyt entered Brown University as a member of the class of 1928, the same year that his father unveiled an electrical system that he called the Hoyt System of Signal Augmentation. However, Willson does not appear to have graduated from Brown. During the 1930's a man named W. Thomas Hoyt was a trader for a couple of prominent New York Stock Exchange firms and this may have been Willson. In December of 1939, at age 32, W. Thomas Hoyt married Elizabeth Brady Schurman, who had previously married and then divorced. During World War II, Hoyt became a regional salvage manager for the War Production Board, first supervising the New York-Northern New Jersey region and then being transferred to Washington to become national salvage director.
At the war's end, he became executive secretary of the Steel Industry's Scrap program, remaining in that position until he joined Hill & Knowlton in 1952. Allan Brandt asserts that Hoyt sold advertising for the Saturday Evening Post, but he cites no source and no confirmation for that claim can be found. A year after joining Hill & Knowlton, the company was put in charge of the TIRC/CTR. Although W. Thomas Hoyt had neither scientific nor tobacco-related experience, he was involved from the start. Intriguingly, in the minutes of one of the first meetings of the Tobacco Industry Research Council he was listed as "Wilson Thomas Hoyt," but after that he was always listed as W. Thomas Hoyt, creating the confusion about his name that persists to this day. When the TIRC was formally created, Hoyt became its first Executive Director and the Executive Secretary of the TIRC's Scientific Advisory Board. He remained on the payroll of Hill & Knowlton and his offices adjoined those of Hill & Knowlton, but Hoyt maintained that he "hardly knows what's going on at Hill and Knowlton."
W. Thomas Hoyt remained at the TIRC/CTR for three decades, and eventually his title was changed to president. According to Brandt, throughout his long tenure, he "exercised considerable authority over grantees and day-to-day practices." He also became very good at repeating the industry's standard line, writing in 1962, "The T.I.R.C. position is … a fairly simple one. We don't know the answers. We don't know what causes lung cancer. Tobacco has not been absolved but neither has it been found guilty, in whole or part. We must continue research."
As CTR Scientific Director Clarence Cook Little admitted in a 1963 memorandum to Hoyt, "In the selection of a Scientific Advisory Board and in the acceptance of the nomination by the board of a scientific director, it was clearly shown that the attitude of the TIRC was to pick scientists interested broadly in the origin and nature of the diseases implicated." So too, it would appear that W. Thomas Hoyt's lack of scientific experience was viewed as beneficial for the role he played at the TIRC/CTR.
In additions to his duties at the Council for Tobacco Research, Hoyt was named president of the New York Athletic Club on January 10, 1967. As noted above, he retired in February of 1984 and died two years later in Connecticut.
Research Note:
Given his prominent role in an institution as important as the TIRC/CTR, there is surprisingly little information available about Hoyt. No obituary of him could be located and almost all sources are incorrect about what the W stood for. On October 14, 1986, three different groups associated with the New York Athletic Club – the Board of Governors, the Quarter Century Club, and the Huckleberry Indians – paid for space in the New York Times to record their grief at the passing of longtime member W. Thomas Hoyt. Oddly, no details about Mr. Hoyt's life were included. But several pieces of corroborating evidence establish that this man was indeed the longtime head of TIRC/CTR. In testimony taken on October 3, 1986, CTR Scientific Director Sheldon Sommers described Hoyt as being terminally ill at his home with a malignant lymphoma of the stomach. A search of the Social Security Death Index yielded this record: W. Hoyt, Born August 28, 1907, Died October 1986, Last Residence Redding, Connecticut. Since Redding was given as Hoyt's residence in a contract that appears on Tobacco Documents Online, there can be no doubt that this is the right man. Positive proof comes from an entry in the Connecticut Death Index for Willson T. Hoyt, Born August 28, 1907, Kansas; died October 12, 1986 Danbury, Connecticut. This man's occupation is listed as retired president of the Council on [sic] Tobacco Research and his home address matches the one on Hoyt's contract.
Identifying him in censuses and vital records also proved difficult because of the contradictory information about his first name. After trying variants, however, a 1919 ship passenger record for a "Wilson Thomas Hoyt" returning to the United States from Europe with his parents, Francis and Edith. This in turn led to a handwritten passport application by his mother, in which she gave the following information about her only child: Willson Thomas Hoyt, born August 28, 1907, Kansas City, Missouri. Missouri birth records (page 317, record 44679) have an unnamed son born on August.
Sources:
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
"Deposition of SHELDON CHARLES SOMMERS, M.D., October 3, 1986, CIPOLLONE v. LIGGETT GROUP INC.". 03 Oct 1986.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/SOMMERSS100386.html.
Stanton A. Glantz, John Slade, Lisa A. Bero, Peter Hanauer and Deborah E. Barnes, The Cigarette Papers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
"Hoyt," New York Times, October 14, 1986, D35.
Deane S. Kintner, "Hoyt Augmenter, Newest of Four-Tube Receivers, Has Many Unusual Features," Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 5, 1925, 60.
Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
"Mrs. E. B. Schurman Has Marriage Here," New York Times, December 30, 1939, 16.
"New Regional Salvage Chief," Niagara Falls Gazette, October 8, 1943, 15.
"Sutherland Quits Salvage Post Here; W. Thomas Hoyt, His Successor, Will Draw a Salary," New York Times, February 11, 1943.
Synonyms
Hoyt, Mr.Hoyt, Tom
Hoyt, W. Thomas
Hoyt, W. Tom