Medallion Service Award: David L. True

 

By Tamara Linse

 

Choosing Wyoming on purpose has been the pattern of Dave True’s life.

True will tell you that the hardest decision of his life wasn’t about oil, cattle, or a board of trustees. It was whether to stay at Purdue, where he was studying to be a large-animal vet, or to come back to the University of Wyoming. “The excuse was I missed the mountains,” he says, “but the reason was, I was going to chase my bride-to-be.” 

Melanie Jackman hardly gave him a second look until senior year in high school. He followed her to Laramie, changed his major to business administration, pledged Sigma Chi and married her halfway through their senior year. They have been married for more than 50 years.

True was born and raised in Casper, but he says that his real home was a small ranch his parents bought up by Laramie Peak on a stretch of water generously called the North Laramie River. He spent every summer there as a kid, riding out on a horse named Wino with a brown paper sack lunch, not to be seen again until evening. 

The values of that ranch life — patience, loyalty — shaped the way he talks about leadership: find good people, trust them, and get out of their way. 

True brought that philosophy home to True Cos., the family business. He built it alongside his brother Hank into one of Wyoming’s most significant private enterprises, spanning oil and gas, drilling, trucking, banking, real estate and ranching. He also brought his expertise to UW, starting on the colleges of ag and business advisory councils in the early 1980s to the Board of Trustees, where he served as chair. This role capped more than four decades of service to the university.

“I always chuckle that I served a 12-year sentence on that board,” he says. “But the best part of it, without any doubt, was getting to know some wonderful people — other trustees, the presidents who have served, the professors, the staff. That was the payback.”

True helped lead the reorganization of the board’s committee structure so that real decisions, not just reports, happened at the committee level. He sat on the search committee that hired President Ed Seidel, and he helped select the latest president Brigadier General Shane Reeves — a Wyoming native who, like True himself, left the state and chose to come home. He guided the board through some of the most difficult and consequential decisions in the university’s recent history. 

“The worst thing is procrastination,” he says. “You surround yourself with good people and get the heck out of their way.”

The True family’s imprint on UW runs deeper than just service. They established the H.A. “Dave” True Jr. Chair in Petroleum and Natural Gas Economics and the H.A. “Dave” True Jr. Family College of Business Deanship — gifts that will shape the College of Business for generations. Students will benefit from his conviction that Wyoming’s energy economy and Wyoming’s university belong to each other. He was named the College of Business’s Outstanding Alumnus in 2011.

Humility runs through his actions and his words. “I still don’t think I’ve earned it,” he says of the Medallion Service Award. “It’s other people around me who deserve it even more so — my bride, Melanie, is the rock that I have built my life on. Our kids and grandkids, our friends and other trustees I’ve had the honor of serving with — they’re the ones that really should get all of this.” 

He adds, “But it’s a real honor. I won’t say it’s reluctantly received. It’s deeply appreciated.”

Today, with 14 grandchildren, two of which headed to Laramie this fall, True watches the next generation make the same trip he once made — to the campus from which he earned his education, served as trustee, and helped build gift-by-gift into something for future generations. 

“When I think of Wyoming and the University of Wyoming,” True says, “it’s a love affair. I love the state. I don’t want to live any place else.”