J. Erik Jonsson

John Erik Jonsson (6 September 1901 – 31 August 1995) was a co-founder and former president of Texas Instruments Incorporated. A skillful businessman, he became mayor of Dallas, a major factor in the creation of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and a philanthropist in later years.

Erik Jonsson was born on September 6, 1901 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. His parents, John Peter and Ellen Charlotte (Palmquist) Jonsson, were both born in Sweden and independently migrated to the United States in the prior decade. Both were naturalized citizens. Jonsson was an only child. The family moved in 1912 to Montclair, New Jersey, where at the age of sixteen Jonsson graduated from Montclair High School. Jonsson was a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), class of 1922 earning a degree in mechanical engineering. He was an Alpha Tau Omega. Jonsson married Margaret Fonde in Knoxville, Tennessee on February 8, 1923 and together they had three children.

Jonsson began his career in 1922 at Alcoa as a rolling mill apprentice, and advanced to the position of manufacturing superintendent of an Alcoa subsidiary, the Aluminum Index Company. He held the position from 1923 to 1927. In 1927 he left Alcoa and entered the auto business attempting a Pontiac dealership, returning to Alcoa in 1929 as a sales engineer.

During Jonsson's last year at Alcoa, J. Clarence Karcher the husband of Mrs. Jonsson's cousin, occasionally asked Jonsson's assistance with expediting materials orders for his start-up company, Geophysical Service Incorporated a pioneering provider of seismic exploration services to the petroleum industry. In June 1930 Karcher offered Jonsson a job managing the manufacture of seismic instruments at Karcher's company lab in Newark, New Jersey, and in July Jonsson again left Alcoa. , In 1934 Jonsson and his family moved to Dallas. Jonsson held the position of secretary of Geophysical Service, which gave him responsibility for all of the accounting, banking, international, legal, manufacturing, personnel, purchasing, and warehousing activities of the company. Jonsson held this position until 1939.

...
Wikipedia