Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was born on December 24, 1905, and died on April 5, 1976. He worked as an aviator, aerospace engineer, business magnate, film producer, and investor, and during his life was among the world’s wealthiest and most powerful figures. He first rose to fame as a film producer, then became a major force in aviation. In his later years, he was famous for odd, reclusive behavior, which stemmed partly from worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic pain after a near-fatal plane crash, and growing deafness. Hughes made his mark in Hollywood starting in the late 1920s by producing expensive, often controversial movies like *The Racket* (1928), *Hell’s Angels* (1930), and *Scarface* (1932). In 1948 he bought RKO Pictures, one of the Big Five studios, but the company struggled under his leadership and shut down in 1957. In 1932 he started Hughes Aircraft Company and spent the next twenty years setting world air speed records and building landmark planes, including the Hughes H-1 Racer (1935) and the H-4 Hercules, also called the Spruce Goose (1947). The H-4 was the largest flying boat ever built and held the record for the longest wingspan of any aircraft from its creation until 2019. He bought and grew Trans World Airlines, and later acquired Air West, renaming it Hughes Airwest. For his aviation achievements in the 1930s, he won the Harmon Trophy twice (1936 and 1938), the Collier Trophy (1938), and the Congressional Gold Medal (1939). He entered the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1973 and was ranked No. 25 on *Flying* magazine’s 2013 list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation. In his final years, Hughes expanded his financial holdings to include many major Las Vegas businesses—real estate, hotels, casinos, and media outlets. At the time, he was seen as one of Nevada’s most powerful men and is widely credited with turning Las Vegas into a more refined, cosmopolitan city. After years of declining mental and physical health, he died of kidney failure in 1976. His legacy continues through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Howard Hughes Holdings Inc. Hughes was the only child of Allene Stone Gano and Howard R. Hughes Sr., a successful inventor and businessman from Missouri. His ancestry included English, Welsh, and some French Huguenot roots, and he was a descendant of John Gano, the minister said to have baptized George Washington. Through John Gano’s sister Susannah, Hughes was a fifth cousin once removed of the Wright brothers. His father patented the two-cone roller bit in 1909, which made rotary drilling for oil possible in previously unreachable places. The elder Hughes shrewdly leased the bits rather than selling them, secured early patents, and founded the Hughes Tool Company in 1909. Hughes’s uncle was the novelist, screenwriter, and film director Rupert Hughes. A 1941 affidavit birth certificate, signed by his aunt Annette Gano Lummis and Estelle Boughton Sharp, states Hughes was born on December 24, 1905, in Harris County, Texas. However, his baptism certificate from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Keokuk, Iowa, dated October 7, 1906, lists his birth as September 24, 1905, with no place of birth given. As a child, Hughes showed a strong interest in science and technology, building Houston’s first wireless radio transmitter at age 11. He became one of the city’s first licensed ham-radio operators, with call sign W5CY (originally 5CY). At 12, a local newspaper photographed him as the first boy in Houston to own a motorized bicycle, which he built from parts of his father’s steam engine. He was an indifferent student but liked math, flying, and mechanics. He took his first flying lesson at 14 and attended the Fessenden School in Massachusetts in 1921. After a short time at The Thacher School, he took math and aeronautical engineering courses at Caltech. The house where he lived as a teenager at 3921 Yoakum Blvd. in Houston still stands, now called Hughes House on the University of St. Thomas campus. His mother Allene died in March 1922 from complications of an ectopic pregnancy. His father died of a heart attack in 1924. These deaths apparently inspired Hughes to include a medical research laboratory in the will he signed at age 19 in 1925. His father’s will had not been updated since Allene’s death, so Hughes Jr. inherited 75% of the family fortune. On his 19th birthday, he was declared an emancipated minor, giving him full control of his life and money. From a young age, Hughes was a skilled and enthusiastic golfer, often scoring near par and playing to a two- or three-handicap in his twenties. He briefly considered a professional golf career and frequently played with top players like Gene Sarazen. He rarely competed and eventually gave up the sport for other interests. He golfed every afternoon at Los Angeles courses such as Lakeside Golf Club, Wilshire Country Club, or Bel-Air Country Club, often with partners George Von Elm or Ozzie Carlton. After an injury in the late 1920s, his golfing tapered off, and following his XF-11 crash, he could no longer play. Hughes left Rice University shortly after his father’s death.