Lamar Muse was `Promethean figure' in industry M. LAMAR MUSE 
1920 - 2007
By TREBOR BANSTETTER
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
As chief executive of fledgling Southwest Airlines, M. Lamar Muse was a pivotal figure in the airline's launch and early years.
More photosSome of the legendary stories surrounding Southwest Airlines -- the free bottles of booze to passengers, the hot-pants-clad "hostesses," the launch of a rival many dubbed "Revenge Air" -- had their origin in the tenure of M. Lamar Muse.

Mr. Muse, the fiery and outspoken former chief executive of Dallas-based Southwest who helped shape the carrier's industry-transforming business model that couples low costs and low fares, died Monday of lung cancer. He was 86.

Mr. Muse was hired in 1971 by Herb Kelleher and Rollin King to be the chief executive of fledgling Southwest, and he was a pivotal figure in the launch and first years of what was to become the nation's largest and most successful low-fare airline. He also was at the forefront of the bruising legal and competitive battles with other airlines that threatened to shut Southwest down or run it out of business in its early days.

He was well-known for his strong opinions and no-holds-barred approach to competition and management. He remained interested in Southwest until his final days, and last year met with Dallas Mayor Laura Miller and officials at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport and Southwest to discuss his views on the Wright Amendment controversy.

"He always spoke his mind, and you never had to worry that he was holding something back," said his son Michael Muse, who worked with his father on Muse Air, a startup carrier that competed with Southwest after Lamar Muse left the company in 1978. "But he changed the industry. There wouldn't be a Southwest Airlines today without him."

Kelleher, Southwest's co-founder and current chairman, called Mr. Muse "a Promethean figure" in the airline industry. "He was a very aggressive and determined and strong figure, and he got us off to a really good start," Kelleher said.

Mr. Muse, who graduated from Palestine High School in East Texas in 1937, attended Southwestern University in Georgetown on a band scholarship and later attended Texas Christian University, studying accounting and finance.

After a wartime stint with the Army Corps of Engineers, where he served in northern France, he became a certified public accountant for Price Waterhouse.

His airline career took off when he joined TransTexas Airways in Houston in 1948 as treasurer and chief financial officer.

He later worked for Fort Worth-based American Airlines, which was then headquartered in New York, as assistant vice president of corporate planning.

After a stint at Southern Airways in Atlanta, Mr. Muse joined Central Airlines in Fort Worth, a regional carrier that served Texas and Oklahoma and had operations at Love and Greater Southwest International Airport in Fort Worth. The actor Jimmy Stewart served on that airline's board.

He also worked at Universal Airlines in Detroit before joining Southwest.

"We wanted to hire Lamar to get the company into the air," Kelleher said. "It proved to be a very wise choice indeed."

It was under Mr. Muse that Southwest began to shake up the marketplace with unheard-of fares, charging $20 each way between Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. The airline also gained notoriety for sassy, humorous advertising. Mr. Muse's late wife, Juanice, designed the outfits, featuring hot pants, worn by flight attendants, whom Southwest called "hostesses."

One of the most famous moments of Mr. Muse's tenure was a 1972 battle with Braniff, when that airline slashed fares between Dallas and Houston to just $13, when Southwest was charging $26.

Mr. Muse took out full-page newspaper ads declaring that "nobody's going to shoot Southwest Airlines out of the sky for a lousy $13." The airline then offered to either match the $13 fare, or sell the more expensive ticket but throw in a bottle of premium liquor.

Business travelers flying on expense accounts quickly flocked to Southwest, buying the more expensive ticket and keeping the liquor. The airline briefly became the state's largest distributor of Chivas, Crown Royal and Smirnoff, and Braniff was eventually slapped with antitrust charges related to the competition with Southwest.

Southwest posted a profit in 1973 and has remained profitable since. In 1978, Mr. Muse testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating airline deregulation.

Kelleher said Mr. Muse, trained as an accountant, could astound people with his ability to process numbers in a flash.

"It was uncanny," Kelleher said. "The treasurer would come in with a document and Lamar would point out an error on page 17 and something wrong on page 23, and he'd always, always be correct."

Mr. Muse was forced out of his position at Southwest in the aftermath of a 1978 boardroom battle over expansion plans to Chicago. Three years later, he founded Muse Air, a regional carrier based at Love Field that was among the first airlines that prohibited smoking.

In the industry, the airline was quickly dubbed "Revenge Air" because it took on Mr. Muse's former employer and was a stark contrast to Southwest's no-frills, homespun service. Muse Air gave every passenger a roomy leather seat and a copy of The Wall Street Journal as it tried to convey an image of sophistication while matching Southwest's low fares.

After raising $35 million in an initial public offering, Muse Air began with 28 daily flights between Dallas and Houston. But the 1982 air-traffic controllers strike badly hampered the airline's operation, and it was sold to Southwest in 1985 after struggling for several years.

Mr. Muse retired at 65 after the sale but continued to follow the airline industry. He regularly appeared at Southwest's shareholders meeting and often sent letters and e-mails to Southwest executives with suggestions and recommendations.

In 2002, he published a memoir, Southwest Passage, which detailed the first days of Southwest.

Last year, he told USA Today that he was concerned that fast-growing Southwest was beginning to resemble the traditional airlines it has battled for so many years.

He met with airline executives last year with an idea for a strategy on the Wright Amendment. He suggested that the airline move some operations to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport in exchange for loosening the restrictions on Love Field, his son said.

"He really believed that D/FW is the best place to be right now, because of its central location, and it's the best place for Southwest's brand of service," Michael Muse said. "But he couldn't convince them."

Despite their years as adversaries, Kelleher said he recently met with Mr. Muse and "had a very enjoyable time talking about old times." Kelleher pledged $150,000 in Southwest's name to the YMCA in Palestine, adding it to a $350,000 gift from Mr. Muse.

"When I talked to him, what he wanted most was the contribution to the YMCA," Kelleher said.

"We wanted to hire Lamar to get the company into the air. It proved to be a very wise choice indeed."

MEMORIAL SERVICE

A memorial for M. Lamar Muse will be held from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Frontiers of Flight Museum, 6911 Lemmon Ave., Dallas

M. Lamar Muse

1937 -- Graduated from Palestine High School, Palestine.

1941 -- Joined accounting firm Price Waterhouse.

1948 -- Hired at Trans Texas Airways in Houston as treasurer and chief financial officer.

1960 -- Joined American Airlines as vice president, corporate planning.

1962 -- Worked as vice president of finance and chief financial officer at Southern Airways in Atlanta.

1965 -- Hired as president and chief executive of Central Airlines in Fort Worth.

1967 -- Joined Universal Airlines of Detroit as president and chief executive.

1971 -- Hired by Herb Kelleher and Rollin King to be president and chief executive at Southwest Airlines.

1972 -- Fought a legendary battle with Braniff Airlines in which Southwest gave customers flying on full fares a bottle of premium liquor.

1978 -- Left Southwest after a boardroom battle.

1981 -- Founded Muse Air with his son, Michael Muse.

1985 -- Muse Air was sold to Southwest for $70 million.

1985 -- Muse Air was sold to Southwest for $70 million.
-FORT WORTH STAR TELEGRAM
-http://www.dfw. com/mld/dfw/ business/ 16641869. htm

M. LAMAR MUSE: 1920-2007
12:00 AM CST on Tuesday, February 6, 2007
By TERRY MAXON / The Dallas Morning News 
M. Lamar Muse, the feisty airline executive who helped launch Southwest Airlines Co. in 1971 
and then left in a boardroom fight seven years later, died late Monday of lung cancer at a Dallas retirement home. He was 86.
Herb Kelleher, one of Southwest's founders and its chairman since 1978, 
said Mr. Muse was "extremely important" to the Dallas-based carrier's success, 
bringing the airline the experience needed to get Southwest started.
Mr. Kelleher called Mr. Muse "a cantankerous genius. ... He was the perfect person 
because he was tough, he was competitive, he was hard-minded  
to get Southwest Airlines off the ground and turn it into a moneymaker, 
with all the opposition that we had and as bitter as it was."
Longtime airline industry executive and consultant John Eichner said 
Mr. Muse developed Southwest into the low-fare, high-productivity machine that it remains today. 
Airlines across the world, such as Ryanair Ltd. in Ireland and WestJet Airlines Ltd. in Canada, 
became successful by copying Southwest, Mr. Eichner said.
"They're all doing this pattern of Southwest Airlines, which really was Lamar's pattern," Mr. Eichner said. 
"It really was one of the big innovations in the airline industry that made these startup airlines possible."
In 1981, Mr. Muse and son Michael Muse, who left Southwest along with his father, 
established another low-fare carrier based in Dallas, Muse Air Corp.  or "Revenge Air," as many labeled it. 
Southwest bought its competitor in 1985, effectively ending Mr. Muse's career running airlines.
Born in Houston in 1920, Mr. Muse grew up in Palestine, Texas, where he graduated from high school in 1937. 
He attended Southwestern University in Georgetown for two years 
before switching to Texas Christian University in 1940, leaving after his junior year.
He joined Price Waterhouse as a certified public accountant in 1941, 
his time there interrupted by a stint in the U.S Army Corps of Engineers from 1943 to 1945. 
He left Price Waterhouse in 1948 to go to work for Trans Texas Airways, 
followed by jobs at American Airlines Inc., Southern Airways, Central Airlines and Universal Airlines. 
Pushed out at Universal in 1969, he moved to Conroe, 
where he was living when he heard about the airline that Rollin W. King and Mr. Kelleher had thought up. 
"Rollin and I jointly agreed we needed someone with experience to operate a real airline with heavy equipment. ... 
Everyone was happy to have Lamar come on board," Mr. Kelleher said.
As Mr. Muse recalled in a 2002 autobiography, Southwest Passage, 
the carrier he joined as president and CEO had few employees, no airplanes and the name "Air Southwest."
"Since Air Southwest sounded to me like some Mickey Mouse, third-level carrier, 
I convinced the board to change the name to 'Southwest Airlines Co.,' " Mr. Muse wrote.
The tiny carrier began operations on June 18, 1971, with three airplanes. 
It had to sell a fourth airplane that was arriving later that year to meet payroll, 
and airline employees figured out a way to operate about the same schedule 
with three airplanes by "turning" the airplanes more quickly between flights  in 10 minutes rather than 25.
"We fumbled around for 18 months before we found the formula," Mr. Muse said. 
"After we got the formula, all it was was cookie-cutting."
But even as the carrier turned profitable and kept growing, 
Mr. Muse began butting heads more and more with Mr. King.
Finally, in March 1978, Mr. Muse sent the Southwest board a letter of resignation, 
with the intent of forcing a showdown that would end up with the board choosing him over Mr. King. 
It was, Mr. Muse later said, a "big mistake."
In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Muse said he was proud of helping establish Southwest Airlines, 
but particularly pleased to have helped build a new YMCA facility in Palestine. 
He set up irrevocable trusts in 1997 to fund the YMCA, named after his parents, Hiram and Nan Muse. 
"That was what I was the proudest of," Mr. Muse said. "I created something."
Mr. Muse was preceded in death by his first wife, Juanice, and his brother, Ken, of Montgomery, Ala. 
Survivors include son Michael Muse of Dallas; daughters Deborah Ann Muse and Diane Muse Kinnan, both of Dallas, 
and Lisa Muse of Liberty Hill; sister Marian Thompson of Palestine; three grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
He is also survived by ex-wife Barbara and her daughters, 
Culleen Vaughn and Connie Grizzard, both of San Antonio; and two grandchildren.
No memorial services are planned for Mr. Muse, his family said. 
Gifts may be made to the Palestine YMCA, Attention: Michael Oranch, 5500 N. Loop 256, Palestine, Texas 75801. 
-DALLAS MORNING NEWS