Clarence “Clare” Tyler, who oversaw daily operations and improvements to the legacy facility as manager of what became the BP Oil refinery in Oregon, died May 4 at StoryPoint senior community near Kalamazoo. He was 91.

He’d suffered an undetermined neurological event a week earlier, daughter Monica Grogan said. He and his late wife, Molly, moved into the facility nearly three years ago to be near daughter Pam Butt and her family.

Mr. Tyler closed his career at the Oregon refinery, which began operations in 1919. He’d spent most of his career with Standard Oil Co. of Ohio — Sohio, as it was best known — but in 1987, a subsidiary of British Petroleum America Inc. acquired the site.

The facility, though in the city of Oregon, has been known as the Toledo refinery, even through changes in ownership. This year, the BP-Husky Toledo Refinery became Cenovus Toledo Refinery.

By early 1990, the plant was producing 127,000 42-gallon barrels of petroleum products a day, he told The Blade then — mostly gasoline, but also diesel fuel, kerosene, aircraft turbine fuel, and heating oil.

The company had spent $10.5 million on capital improvements in 1989, with an additional $12 million on the books for 1990, he said. 

Being manager of that refinery “was the pinnacle of his career,” Mrs. Grogan said.

He’d earlier done design work at the facility, daughter Laurel Tyler said. “That refinery had a special place in his heart,” she said.

Mr. Tyler retired in late 1991.

He got a job offer from Sohio when he graduated from Purdue University in 1953 with a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering. He was drafted, and the job offer held during his stateside Army service.

Sohio named him manager of the Oregon refinery in 1980. Over the previous 25 years, he held positions of increasing responsibility in corporate engineering, chemicals, and refining units.

Before Oregon, he was manager of marketing and refining planning and administration. He’d earlier been manager of operations coordination for the company’s refining department; had been technical superintendent at Sohio’s Lima, Ohio, facility, and was general superintendent of administration at the refinery in Oregon.

“He was very good at seeing the interrelatedness of things, both people and systems,” Ms. Tyler said. “And he enjoyed thinking about the people side and the technical side.”

The refinery manager job “was particularly gratifying, with a group of people who were a team,” she said.

Throughout his life, he sought to learn about how things worked and about the people he encountered.

“He was personable,” Mrs. Grogan said. ‘He met someone new, and he wanted to know their story and connect with them. As a manager of a large organization, that’s a huge skill to have.”

During his career, he received patents, wrote technical papers, and led a committee of the American Petroleum Institute. He completed a senior executive program at Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mr. Tyler served on Boy Scout and Junior Achievement boards in the Toledo area and was the 1989 chairman of the United Way of Greater Toledo’s annual fall campaign. He’d been a leader of the Toledo Symphony’s orchestra relations committee.

For years in retirement, he and his wife volunteered for activities to support the symphony.

“The give-back-to-the-community mindset, that’s just what you do,” Mrs. Grogan said. “They remained that way as long as they could, and we all live that way.”

He also had an abiding interest in history and, in retirement, received a master’s degree in history from the University of Toledo. 

“He read a lot of fiction, especially mysteries, and travel was huge,” Mrs. Grogan said. “He liked his nights with the guys playing poker.”

After moving from West Toledo in 2004, he and his wife divided their year between Stuart, Fla., and Ann Arbor.

He was born Aug. 6, 1931, in Cleveland to Salymea and Clarence Tylicki. He and his brother, Theodore, later changed their last name to Tyler.

He was a graduate of Garfield Heights High School, where he was on the football team and played trombone in the band.

He was a former member of St. Joseph Parish in Sylvania.

His wife of 65 years, the former Margaret “Molly” Muirhead, died Nov. 23, 2022.

Surviving are his daughters Laurel Tyler, Monica Grogan, and Pam Butt; nine grandchildren, and two great-granddaughters.

Services will begin at 11:30 a.m. June 8 at St. Francis of Assisi Church, Ann Arbor, where he’d been a member. 

The family suggests tributes to the Clare and Molly Tyler STEM education fund at Martin County Library in Stuart, Fla.; the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, or the Florida Oceanographic Society.

First Published May 27, 2023, 4:00 a.m.