Tinsley first became involved in NACS in 1963 when he attended his first NACS Annual Meeting. The following year, he was tapped as secretary/treasurer.

Tom Tinsley, who served as 1968 NACS president, died on Oct. 16 at the age of 94, at West Place Nursing Home in Athens, Texas.

Tinsley spent his entire professional career in retail, beginning in the 1930s when he joined his father’s grocery store business, which also offered gas and hot foods. In 1959 he transitioned into convenience stores when he opened Quick Shop Market Inc

“I could put in five or six convenience stores with the capital it would take for one supermarket. The way I was looking at it, I could scatter my losses. If I had a bad location in a supermarket, I had it, but if I had a bad location in five or six convenience stores, it wouldn’t be so bad,” he told NACS in a 2001 interview. “My theory of going into the food industry was that could I could eat my inventory (if sales weren’t up to par),” he joked during the same interview.

Tinsley first became involved in NACS in 1963 when he attended his first NACS Annual Meeting. The following year, he was became the secretary/treasurer, and went on to serve as NACS president in 1968.

During Tinsley’s term as NACS president the first international NACS Annual Meeting was held in Montreal with 950 attendees; funding was provided for a Management Development Seminar series of videos that greatly expanded NACS’ education offer; and NACS examined how the industry could create more industry-specific research—which lead to the first NACS State of the Industry in 1970. Also in 1968, NACS established the Legislative Committee, which began NACS’ foray into advocacy.