Charles Schusterman

(1945 - 2000)

Profession: Philanthropist

Hometown: Tulsa

Inducted: 2000

Charles Shusterman was born to a Jewish Orthodox family. They immigrated from Russia to Tulsa, Oklahoma after Shusterman was born. In 1958 he graduated from the University of Oklahoma (OU) with a degree in petroleum engineering. After briefly serving in the United States Army, he began buying oil properties and started an oil exploration company named Samson Resources. It operates today under the name Samson Investment Company, one of the top 20 privately-owned oil companies in the world.

In 1983 after being diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CLM), doctors told him he had anywhere from six months to three years left to live. Experimental treatments managed to prolong his life for another eighteen years. The side effects from his treatments left him with lung disease and neuropathy for the rest of his life. In 1987 he and his wife founded the Charles and Lynn Shusterman Family Foundation (CSLFF). Since then the Foundation has awarded more than $160 million in grants.

In 1999 the Shusterman Family Foundation granted $10 Million to OU to help establish an education and research campus in Tulsa. In 2003 the CSLFF donated another $10 million for construction of a new health center. The Shusterman Center Clinic was dedicated in 2019. The 100,000-square-foot clinic merged patient care services and clinical programs under one roof.