With incredible sadness we note the passing of Jack Dahlstrom. One of the founding members of our club and one of our first corporate sponsors. He generously donated hunts to our first years in the club and helped us get started.
Jack was an exceptional human being. He graduated with an engineering degree from University of Auburn. He finally went into the family business. It was one of the largest privately owned construction companies in the United States in it’s time. Every day, if you live in Austin, Dallas or most other parts of the state you travel on a road Jack designed, supervised and built. If you have ever flown out of the Dallas Fort Worth Airport, it’s there because of the site work Jack did.
He was senior executive of this construction company that at one time was building in two countries, nine states and had over 2,500 workers and 21 airplanes.
He actually hated all of this.
He chose a different course in his life and became an ardent conservationist and steward of the land. He, in his families name, took back the YO Onion Creek, which was the family ranch. He opened the Flatrock Game Ranch in Buda and ran a top notch hunting and exotic breeding operation on the family land. While an exotic ranch entrepreneur he balanced and supervised brutal legal fights with the IRS. A legacy of the family construction business demise during the oil crises and subsequent recession. He never complained – and handled it like a true Texan. He helped navigate extremely difficult IRS problems, fought legally to protect the family trust and preserved the family land. From experience I can tell you this would have broken a lesser man.
He scrimped, saved – re-invested in the ranch and grew his exotic business until there last payment to the IRS. It opened a new phase in the ranch. Jack mentored a number of young boys who became fine young men. My son was one of them. He helped turn my son’s life around. In fact Jack was the inspiration for our club. Jack was one of the hardest working men I ever met. It was nothing for him to work 16 hour days, cooking fine meals and entertaining guest.
Jack envisioned protecting the family ranch for future generations. The ranch is honey combed with caves, sink holes and caverns. It is one of the single largest undeveloped recharge areas to the Edwards Aquifer. When you drink a glass of pure Austin water, that is in part thanks to Jack’s vision and conservation forethought.
He established a land trust, combining a difficult partnership of federal, state, county and city resources to preserve the land and turn part of it into public land. This type of conservation trust had never been attempted, and is now a famous model throughout the country. Law schools even teach this model as a rare coordination of wildly different interest to further conservation.
Jack came to a number of our early banquets, purchased a family hunt to Africa through our club, and was a tremendous family event for him. Leann had the honor to photograph his daughter’s wedding. Jack’s family was his life.
Jack’s passion was conservation: he lived it, breathed it and made it a part of his life. In death in a thousand ways, he passes on his legacy.
