Daniel Pierson Waring Jr., who with his father founded Waring Oil Co. and Neill Gas in the 1950s, died Tuesday. He was 94.

“He was a wonderful man and had a wonderful disposition,” said Rolling Fork lawyer and former state representative Charles Weissinger Jr.

“D.P. was a wonderful friend of mine for 55 years, and I have fond memories of lunch with him almost daily at Walnut Hills,” Jerry Beard said. “He was an astute businessman and a valued mentor. As was said of his father before him, ‘if he shook your hand on a deal, the deal was done!’”

Bobby Fleming called Waring “a very generous man. He was very friendly and a very open person.”

A Vicksburg native, Waring graduated from Carr Central High School in 1938, and received a degree in business administration from Mississippi State College in 1942. He entered the Navy as an ensign in the supply corps after graduation and received his training at Harvard.  He was later on the staff at Cornell University.

He was deployed on a Navy tanker, the Maniponi, in 1944, and served on the ship until he was discharged as a lieutenant in June 1946 after serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters during World War II.

“He took oil to the Azores to be sent to Europe,” Weissinger said. “There were a lot of (German) submarines out in that ocean, but he said he was able to hide from them and come home.”

When Waring returned home, his son Dan said, he went into business with his father, D.P. Waring Sr., and operated a gas