Welcome Wilson, Sr.
Chairman of Welcome Group
Thursday, June 6, 2019
Hess Club
5430 Westheimer, Houston, TX 77056
Houston Real Estate Developer for 62 years. Chairman of Welcome Group, landlord to 4,035,000 square feet of Manufacturing and Industrial Facilities in 87 locations in Texas.
First projects in the 1950s and 1960s were Master Planned Communities, Jamaica Beach and Tiki Island in Galveston County, both of which are now separate cities. He later developed apartments, retail centers, hotels and three downtown office buildings.
Honors include: Inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame, Receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Houston Business Journal and Awarded an Honorary Doctor’s degree from the University of Houston, where he was a BBA grad in 1949.
Of note, he received the UH Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1970, the UH Bauer College of Business Distinguished Alumni Award in 1996 and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley in 2018.
In the past, he was Chairman of the Board of two Houston banks, was Chairman of an American Stock Exchange company and was on the Board of Directors and owned 10% of the Houston Astros baseball team. In March 2019, he will celebrate his 91th birthday.
He was a long-time Chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of Houston, Chairman of its Drive to Tier One and is now Chairman of its Political Action Committee. He is a Director Emeritus of the Greater Houston Partnership, having served a long time as its Higher Education Chairman.
In the 50s and 60s he served in the Executive Office of the President under Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. He witnessed the Atom bomb test in Nevada and the Hydrogen Bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
In 1958, he was awarded the Arthur Fleming Award as One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men in Federal Service. Out of 600 who received this award since 1948, Wikipedia lists him as a “notable” twenty along with Astronaut Neil Armstrong (moon landing), Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.
He was invited and spoke to a joint session of the New Mexico Legislature. He was appointed Special Ambassador to Nicaragua by President Lyndon Johnson. After World War II, he served for two years as a Naval Officer in Japan, having graduated first in his class in officer’s school.
He married his college sweetheart on the day he graduated from UH, 70 years ago. They have 5 kids, 16 grandkids and 16 great-grandkids, one of whom is in college.