In 1982, with a helicopter already circling the globe and no place to refuel over the Pacific, Tom Luce persuaded a container ship to carry jet fuel into open water and become a landing pad. Luce, the Dallas attorney and civic builder who spent six decades turning improbable assignments into working institutions, died on July 25, 2026, in Telluride, Colorado.

That ocean landing was one episode in a career built around a repeated question: what would make a difficult system work? Luce applied it first as a lawyer for Ross Perot, then to public schools, government, mental health policy and the future of Texas itself. His son Ken told The Dallas Morning News that his father's work centered on helping his community and state.

Luce grew up in a University Park duplex with his mother and earned his way forward through public school and athletics. He helped Highland Park High School win a state football title in 1957, attended Virginia Military Institute on an athletic scholarship and transferred to Southern Methodist University. He studied accounting while working through college, then attended law school at night. He received his undergraduate degree in 1962 and law degree in 1966, according to SMU Magazine.

He became a founding and managing partner of Hughes & Luce, focusing on corporate law and commercial litigation. Ross Perot hired him in 1974, beginning a professional relationship spanning major business transactions and ventures beyond conventional legal work. Luce helped with the 1984 sale of Electronic Data Systems to General Motors, authenticated a medieval copy of the Magna Carta in Britain and brought it home on a commercial flight, and devised the Pacific refueling stop that allowed Ross Perot Jr. and Jay Coburn to complete their helicopter journey around the world.

The same appetite for hard problems pulled him into public education. As chief of staff of the Texas Select Committee on Public Education in 1984, he helped develop a major state reform package. He carried education into his 1990 campaign for governor, into two books about improving public schools, and into organizations he helped build, including Just for the Kids, the National Center for Educational Accountability and the National Math and Science Initiative.

Luce's public roles ranged from a one-case appointment as chief justice pro tempore of the Texas Supreme Court in 1988 to chairing Perot's 1992 presidential campaign. In 2005, President George W. Bush nominated him as assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development at the U.S. Department of Education, and the Senate confirmed him on June 30, according to the Congressional Record. The George W. Bush White House Archives records that he also served on state commissions and the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board.

His later work joined causes that government often treated separately. He helped found the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, worked on North Texas biotechnology initiatives for Lyda Hill Philanthropies and, in 2016, created Texas 2036 to plan across education, health, infrastructure, natural resources and government performance. During a 2020 conversation hosted by The Texas Tribune, he reduced that philosophy to one sentence: "At the end of the day, it all has to fit together."

Luce and his wife, Pam, married in 1960. He was survived by Pam; their son, Ken, and his wife, Nancy; daughters Debroah Ellen Tucker and Susan Luce; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. After his death, former President Bush described him as a champion of education reform who believed every child deserved the chance to read and succeed.

The organizations Luce built still carry his method into public life: gather evidence, connect people who usually work apart and stay with a problem longer than one election or budget cycle. Texas 2036 continues its long view toward the state's bicentennial, the Luce Scholars program at SMU trains law students in service, and the education and civic institutes he helped start keep converting data into opportunities for students and families.