Thomas Cave Wilson was born in Arizona in 1907. His family moved to Nevada when his father, Frederick Weston Wilson, was offered a position on the University of Nevada faculty. Thomas Wilson's mother, Claire Cave, was a novelist and writer.
Thomas Wilson attended schools in Reno and the University of Nevada. His youthful years in Reno coincided with the city's most colorful and symbolic times - movie stars and eastern socialites establishing residence for divorce, Prohibition, and the early days of legalized gambling.
Completing his university education in English and journalism, Wilson worked at reporting and advertising for several Nevada newspapers, later moving to the San Francisco Bay area to gain further experience in his field. Wilson returned to western Nevada, and a brief stint at managing a dairy ranch. He had recently married Ina Winters, a daughter of western pioneers.
Wilson's career was in advertising and promotion, and this oral history concentrates on that aspect of his life. He established the Wilson agency in Reno in 1939, and has continued in the advertising business since that time. He devised the first-ever ad campaign for a gambling casino - Harold's Club in Reno - and created a style that no other agency has been able to equal, or even to change. The "Harolds Club or Bust" outdoor-sign campaign brought endless, valuable publicity to the casino and to Reno. The signs have appeared all over the world. The ad series became a book, Pioneer Nevada and it won an award from the American Association for State and Local History. It sold more than 100,000 copies, and was used as a textbook in Nevada schools.
Wilson's agency handled political campaigns for some of Nevada's best-known office holders, most often successfully. His recounting of relationships with the old political machines holds numerous lessons.
Many businesses employed the Wilson agency for imaginative, creative, money-making advertising. Civil organizations paid little or nothing, and received the same dedicated service in the interest of making Reno into a place that Wilson wanted to live in and take pride in. The Reno Chamber of Commerce was a beneficiary, sometimes at Wilson's own expense, and quite often at the expense of Raymond I. Smith, the owner of Harold's Club.
Wilson founded the Reno Advertising Club; he joined the Nevada State Press Association, and local and national press groups. He has had long affiliations with national advertising associations, and he is highly respected by his colleagues. He has many ideas about how young people should be trained for advertising careers; he is highly critical of modern-day practices in this field.
With the outbreak of World War II, Wilson became interested in the Civil Air Patrol and he was responsible for the founding of the Civil Air Patrol Jeep Squadron.