Mark Anton

Webb features Mark Anton who built Suburban Propane into top retailer and helped found NPGA along the way. In the company's earliest days, Anton obtained propane from a nearby Phillips Petroleum Co. plant, which considered it a useless by-product of its oil-refining business. He sold the propane to homeowners who, like his wife, preferred gas over electric or kerosene. He went on to establish three plants, eventually going public in 1945 as the first publicly owned company focused on distributing propane.