Montanan and decorated veteran with blue-collar roots won an easy victory, but Thorn quickly found that fighting an experienced guerrilla army in the jungles of Vietnam was a more honest battle than those he would wage in the halls of Congress.
Thorn had a front-row seat for some of the last days of true statesmanship in Washington. He was at the table when President Reagan and Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O’Neill threw partisanship aside for the benefit of the country, in contrast to the “us against them” politics popular on both sides of the aisle. His contemporaries were career politicians looking to stay in office above all else. Thorn didn’t mind the fight and didn’t mind sleeping in his office, but eventually the fundamental dishonesty of the entire process wore him down. When he became a father, the time away from family became too much to bear; it was time to go home.
His departure from D.C. came at a time of historic lows in terms of oil prices. Kathy saw that extraction technology was changing rapidly and realized that there was a real future in the state as a petroleum producer. In 1988 they gathered some outside capital through Thorn’s contacts in Washington and poured much of their savings into buying a failing energy company with leases across the state’s northern border. Thorn’s desire to be home with his family was the impetus for him learning how to fly and he traveled between his oil fields and Butte in a Piper Cherokee that he piloted himself. The family of three lived a relatively humble existence as prices dipped even further during the early 1990s. Fortunately, they had diversified their assets, and their struggles in the oil and gas market were tempered by the state’s expanding real estate and tourist economies. Thorn doubled down on land and stretched his credit to its absolute limit.
Oil found its bottom in 1998 but they kept their operating expenses low, stayed in the black, and even managed to buy up additional leases from struggling competitors. The price of oil doubled by 2000 and did so again by 2005. The company increased its production to full capacity. When the financial crisis struck in 2008, the oil market hit an all-time high and Thorn sold most of his highly valued oil and gas holdings at the peak of those values.
Thorn’s oil business made the family a fortune, but it was a company that almost put them under that ended up cementing their position as one of the wealthiest families on the planet. Thorn had founded Neversweat LNG Development LP, a liquid natural gas company, in 2005 at a time when a major increase in LNG imports was projected. He’d invested heavily in building a liquid natural gas importation and regasification facility in Freeport, Texas. In 2008 the shale gas revolution hit the United States, turning the industry on its head. With no further need to import LNG, the project looked like it would put the Thorntons into bankruptcy, but the scrappy miner’s son wasn’t out of the fight. He asked his engineers to reverse the regasification process. With the reserves discovered in the United States, Thorn knew the country could become a source for worldwide LNG exports. The only thing he needed to do was change a few laws. He worked with old friends at a law firm in Denver and applied pressure to the right politicians in the swamp; the Department of Energy approved the first U.S. LNG export license for Neversweat LNG in 2008, catapulting them from millionaires to billionaires. That was when Kathy found the lump.
Annika took a leave of absence from her career and they fought the dreaded disease as a united family. Kathy stood proudly at Annika and Raife’s wedding, despite the devastating effects of the chemotherapy; her strength inspired them all. Still, the cancer was aggressive and had been discovered too late. She died on a Sunday morning, in the historic Butte home that she had lovingly restored, Thorn holding one hand and Annika the other.
Thorn’s healing had taken place on horseback, hunting the mountains and fly-fishing the lakes and streams of Montana and Idaho with Jonathan as his trusted friend and confidant. Almost fifteen years later the wilds remained his mistress, with Thorn never remarrying or even dating. He preferred to live with his wife’s memory.
The women drifted off toward the living room as the men congregated in the walnut-paneled bar. Jonathan pulled the top from the rectangular bottle