Thomas Parry Billings

  Thomas Parry Billings, age 94, prominent Utah mining executive, died Thursday at home of natural causes. Born October 21, 1884 at Salt Lake City, Utah the son of Lucias A. and Emma Parry Billings. He married Elizabeth Hyland in Salt Lake City, November 9, 1913. He graduated with honors from the University of Utah in 1906, where he was elected to Phi Kappa Phi and Theta Tau honorary fraternities. Mr. Billings was a pioneer in the mining industry of Utah beginning his career with Bingham Mines Company. During his fifty years of service to the industry he pioneered the recovery of copper from leased waters of Bingham Canyon, supervised the construction of the Yosemite Tunnel during World War II, was appointed by the government as a dollar a year man in helping to produce arsenic ore at Gold Hill, Utah. When the Bingham Mines were purchased by the U.S. Smelting Refining and Mining Company Mr. Billings became manager, later general manager of mines for the company's Western states, retiring in 1949 as consulting engineer. He was a contributor to several mining periodicals and advisor to writers of mining history in the West. In 1920, Mr. Billings, then general manager for the Bingham Mines Company, gave to the state of Utah a specimen known as geode, high in lead-silver ore which is now in the Utah State Capitol. In 1952, he was appointed head of the lead and zinc department of the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. in which capacity he remained for one year. In 1965, he was awarded the Legion of Honor by the American Institute of Mining Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, in recognition of his fifty years of service to the mining industry in the United States.

  He had been an active member of Fort Douglas Golf and Country Club, now Hidden Valley Country Club; a former member of University Club; a member of the Emeritus Club, the University of Utah Alumni Association of Utah Mining Engineers. He was a member of Argenta Lodge No. 3F & A.M. and of the Scottish Rite of Free Masonry, also the York Rite of Free Masonry of Salt Lake City and El Kalah Shrine of Utah.

  He is survived by two daughters: Mrs. Valois A. (Eudora) Zarr, Salt Lake City; Mrs. Mike (Betty) Klonizos, Midvale; four grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; his wife, Elizabeth preceded him in death February 3, 1977.

Public funeral services will be held Monday at 12 noon, at the Masonic Temple. Friends may call Sunday 7-8 p.m. at Nell O'Donnell Mortuary, 372 East 100 South. In lieu of flowers the family suggests donations to Shriners' Hospital for Crippled Children. Interment at Mt. Calvary Cemetery.

--Salt Lake Tribune, February 27 1977