Personal Life
Thomas Austin Preston, Jr. was born on December 31, 1928, in Johnson, Arkansas, but when he was an infant his parents moved to Turkey, Texas. After they divorced, his mother returned to Johnson, while his father moved to Amarillo. Slim is quoted as saying: "It's a good thing he did, because Amarillo Slim sounds a heck of a lot better than Turkey Tom or Arkansas Austin." Preston was divorced, had three children, and lived in Amarillo, Texas.
In August 2003, Preston was indicted in Randall County, Texas on charges of indecency with a 12-year-old grandchild. The charges were reduced to misdemeanor assault in a plea bargain and on February 10, 2004, Preston pled "no contest" to the reduced charges, "to protect his family". Preston received a $4,000 fine, two years probation and was ordered to undergo counseling. In a 2009 interview, he stated that he was innocent of any wrongdoing, but chose to take the plea bargain in order to spare his family from a court trial.
Early on the morning of October 4, 2006, Preston was the victim of an attempted armed robbery. The armed robber fired three bullets into Preston's car as he sped away. Preston was not injured.
On January 28, 2007, Preston was robbed at gunpoint while in his home.
On January 22, 2009, Preston was beaten and robbed near the intersection of Interstate 40 and Soncy Road while attempting to collect a gambling debt.
Preston's autobiography was the topic of a biopic movie reported to be under development. Nicolas Cage reportedly was to play Preston's character in the movie. According to a 2009 article at Poker Listings the "planned Hollywood movie about Slim's life" has been "dropped".
Amarillo Slim died on April 29, 2012, of colon cancer at the age of 83.
Read more about this topic: Amarillo Slim
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters “woman’s peculiar sphere,” her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“No Vice or Wickedness, which People fall into from Indulgence to Desires which are natural to all, ought to place them below the Compassion of the virtuous Part of the World; which indeed often makes me a little apt to suspect the Sincerity of their Virtue, who are too warmly provoked at other Peoples personal Sins.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)
“Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment.... The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)