E. Bronson Ingram; Ran Oil and Barge Firm

E. Bronson Ingram, 63, a billionaire industrialist who parlayed his family’s oil and barge business into one of the nation’s largest privately held companies. Ingram was chairman and chief executive of Ingram Industries Inc., which ranked 14th on Forbes’ 1994 list of the nation’s 500 largest privately held companies. Among its businesses: barge transportation, insurance and the manufacture of industrial oil and gas equipment. In October, Forbes listed Ingram as Tennessee’s only billionaire and the nation’s 56th-richest person, with estimated holdings of $1.3 billion. Ingram joined the family business, Ingram Oil and Refining Co., in 1955 and served as president from 1963 to 1978. In Nashville, Tenn., on June 15 of cancer.