Benedict I. Lubell

Lubell was born to a Jewish family[3] on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.[1] His father Samuel L. Lubell founded the Bell Oil and Gas Company, an independent oil refiner in Tulsa, Oklahoma[1] and Lubell Brothers, a shirt manufacturer in New York City.[4] He has two sisters: art dealer Grace Borgenicht Brandt (married to Jack Borgenicht) and Shirley Black Kash (formerly married to Eli M. Black).[1] He is a graduate of Columbia College, Phi Beta Kappa, and Columbia University Law School.[1][5] After school, he practiced law in New York City at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan until 1936, when he joined the family business in Tulsa.[1] In 1965, the family sold Bell Oil and Lubell formed a new oil production company, the Lubell Oil Company, where he worked until his retirement in 1995.[1]

Lubell was a founding trustee of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, president of the Tulsa Arts Council, and head of Tulsa's Municipal Arts Commission, and served as a director of the National Bank of Tulsa.[1] In 1982, he received the Oklahoma Governor's Arts Award.[1] Lubell Park in Tulsa is named in his honor.[2]

In 1939, he married Norma Rubenstein (died 1994),[1][6] daughter of New York textile executive Jacob A. Rubenstein.[7] They had two children, Ann Lubell Margolis and John Lubell.[1][8] Lubell died at his home in Milwaukee of emphysema.[1] Services were held at Temple Israel in Tulsa.[2]