His father wanted him to be a lawyer, but he disappointed his father, even as his own son would later disappoint him in a similar way. Instead he decided to be a wildcat oil driller in the days when oil drilling was beginning to look like an industry. This made him rich and he started building an empire that made headlines more than half a century after his own death. He did his “bit” for the industry (a pun to be explained later). The family had a distinguished beginning but little to indicate its future when Howard Robard Hughes, Sr. was born in Lancaster, Missouri, in 1869. Three years later his brother Rupert was born. Rupert would become a prominent writer and editor and once was an editor for the Encyclopedia Britannica. Their father was a versatile man – a railroad president, lawyer, and judge.

AOWM – September 9