Thomas P. Pike; Industrialist Led Fight Against Alcoholism

Thomas P. Pike, an industrialist, assistant Defense Department secretary under President Dwight D. Eisenhower and a Stanford student body president who decades later returned to that university as chief of its board of trustees, has died.

A spokesman for Cabot & Sons mortuary in Pasadena said Pike, once head of the state’s largest oil drilling contracting firm, was 83 when he died Friday.

Despite his wealth and prominence, Pike’s primary interest lay more in personal than in public areas.

His own debilitating experiences with alcohol had brought him to Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery groups where, over the past four decades, he had spoken to thousands of fellow alcoholics of his own addiction, which he had controlled until he was in his 30s.

He told how, after he became sober, his promising career blossomed even further:

He became deputy assistant defense secretary in 1953, assistant defense secretary in 1954 and then a special assistant to Eisenhower from 1956 to 1958.

A lifelong Republican, he was state chairman of the Richard Nixon presidential campaign in 1960 and a member of Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial steering committee that year. In 1960, he also returned to Stanford (where he liked to tell of the night as a student he quaffed 27 bottles of beer in a single sitting) as head trustee. He also was a trustee at Hoover Institute, Loyola Marymount University, Mayfield School of Pasadena, the Rand Corp., Stanford Research Institute and Hewlett Packard.

A deeply religious man, he considered his work with other recovering alcoholics his personal testament. He founded the Alcoholism Council of Greater Los Angeles and, with Robert Finch, a former secretary of Health Education and Welfare, former U.S. Sen. Harold Hughes (D-Iowa), secured passage of legislation establishing the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

His automobile license plate read “AA 47 YR,” a highly visible testament to his lengthy affiliation with Alcoholics Anonymous, which he credited with his recovery.

Survivors include his wife, Katherine, a son, two daughters, 14 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren, a brother and two sisters.

Donations in Pike’s name may be made to the National Council of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency.