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Howard Hughesby
Archie P. McDonald | |
| The
media provided plenty of coverage of the eccentricities of Howard Hughes Jr.,
legendary industrialist, aviator, and motion picture producer/director. Especially
memorable were stories of his reclusiveness and phobias, made much of in a novel
titled The Carpetbaggers published by Harold Robbins in the 1960s and a more recent
film titled "The Aviator," starring Leonardo DeCaprio. |
What
of Howard Hughes Sr., a person blamed by in both vehicles for some of Jr.'s quirks.
Howard
Robard Hughes Sr., was born in Lancaster, Missouri, on September 9, 1869. After
finishing a public education in Keokuk, Iowa, Hughes attended military preparation
academies in Morgan Park, Illinois, and St. Charles, Missouri, before attending
Harvard University and later the University of Iowa. Hughes did not complete his
legal education but he did hang out his shingle in his father's firm before deciding
to enter the lead and zinc mining business in Joplin, in the southwestern portion
of Missouri.
Like many other strike-it-rich hopefuls, Hughes arrived in
Beaumont as quickly as
possible after the news of the Spindletop
Gusher in 1901 circulated. Hughes founded a drilling business in Beaumont
in partnership with Walter B. Sharp and for the next several years moved about
southern Texas and Louisiana, pursuing the inevitable "boom" that followed each
new discovery.
Frustrated, as were many drillers, with the slow pace and
sometimes inability of available drilling equipment and techniques to penetrate
rocks in the quest for oil, Hughes took time off to think about the problem. As
a result, he designed a drilling tool, or bit, with three drilling components
which operated on an interlocking basis. Previous methods essentially consisted
of pounding drilling the tool downward toward oil; Hughes' device ground the strata
and pushed it aside and upward behind the tool.
In a demonstration at
Goose Creek, Texas, Hughes proved that his tool could penetrate solid rock, so
he filed for the first of what grew to more than seventy patents and the foundation
of a sizeable fortune. The Sharp-Hughes Tool Company produced the bits from 1909
until Sharp's death in 1912. Eventually Hughes acquired all stock in the company
from Sharp's heirs or others who had purchased them, when the firm, with headquarters
in Houston, became Hughes Tool Company.
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According
to Russell Davis Johnston, youngest son of Hugh White, the school was referred
to as Central School and was located in the Montrose area near the University
of St. Thomas. In this class photo are the Herman children and Brown children.
Russell on the front row far right with X on shirt. Howard Hughes
stands behind him in black suit and white tie.The Kirby brothers are in the front
row (left to right) first and third child. Teacher is Miss Davis.
Photo c.1911courtesy Johnston Family |
Hughes
married Allene Gano in 1904 and they were the parents of one son—Howard Robard
Hughes Jr., and man about whom novels were written and movies were filmed and
legends told even into the twenty-first century.
© Archie P. McDonald
All
Things Historical
July 28, 2008 column
A syndicated column in over 70 East
Texas newspapers
(The East Texas Historical Association provides this
column as a public service. Archie P. McDonald is director of the Association
and author of more than 20 books on Texas.) |
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