Page 98 - Cousins - Celebrities, Saints & Sinners

Hughes enjoyed a highly successful business career beyond engineering, aviation, and filmmaking; many of his
career endeavors involved varying entrepreneurial roles. The Summa Corporation was the name adopted for
the business interests of Howard Hughes after he sold the tool division of Hughes Tool Company in 1972. The
company served as the principal holding company for Hughes' business ventures and investments. It is
primarily involved in aerospace and defense, electronics, mass media, manufacturing, and hospitality
industries, but has maintained a strong presence in a wide variety of industries including real estate,
petroleum drilling and oilfield services, consulting, entertainment, and engineering. Much of his fortune was
later used for philanthropic causes, notably towards health care and medical research.

He set many world records and commissioned the construction of custom aircraft for himself while
heading Hughes Aircraft at the airport in Glendale, CA. On July 14, 1938, Hughes set record by completing a
flight around the world in just 91 hours (three days, 19 hours, 17 minutes), beating the previous record set in
1933 by Wiley Post in a single engine Lockheed Vega by almost four days. Taking off from New York City,
Hughes continued to Paris, Moscow, Omsk, Yakutsk, Fairbanks, Minneapolis, then returning to New York City.

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Hughes dated many famous women, including Billie Dove, Faith Domergue, Bette Davis, Ava Gardner (10
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cousin, 3 times removed), Olivia de Havilland, Katharine Hepburn (7 cousin, 2times removed), Hedy
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Lamarr, Ginger Rogers (9 cousin), Janet Leigh, Rita Hayworth (13 cousin), Mamie Van Doren and Gene
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Tierney (10 cousin).
In 1958, Hughes told his aides that he wanted to screen some movies at a film studio near his home. He stayed
in the studio's darkened screening room for more than four months, never leaving. He ate only chocolate bars
and chicken and drank only milk, and was surrounded by dozens of Kleenex boxes that he continuously stacked
and re-arranged. He wrote detailed memos to his aides giving them explicit instructions neither to look at him
nor speak to him unless spoken to. Throughout this period, Hughes sat fixated in his chair, often naked,
continually watching movies. When he finally emerged in the summer of 1958, his hygiene was terrible. He had
neither bathed nor cut his hair and nails for weeks; this may have been due to allodynia, which results in a pain
response to stimuli that would normally not cause pain.

The wealthy and aging Hughes, accompanied by his entourage of personal aides, began moving from one hotel
to another, always taking up residence in the top floor penthouse. In the last ten years of his life, 1966 to 1976,
Hughes lived in hotels in many cities.

On November 24, 1966 (Thanksgiving Day), Hughes arrived in Las Vegas by railroad car and moved into
the Desert Inn. Because he refused to leave the hotel and to avoid further conflicts with the owners, Hughes
bought the Desert Inn in early 1967. The hotel's eighth floor became the nerve center of Hughes' empire and
the ninth-floor penthouse became his personal residence. Between 1966 and 1968, he bought several other
hotel-casinos, including the Castaways, New Frontier, the Landmark Hotel and Casino, and the Sands. He
bought the small Silver Slipper casino for the sole purpose of moving its trademark neon silver slipper; visible
from Hughes' bedroom, as it had apparently kept him awake at night.
Hughes is reported to have died on April 5, 1976, at 1:27 p.m. on board an aircraft, His reclusiveness and
possibly his drug use made him practically unrecognizable. His hair, beard, fingernails, and toenails were
long—his tall 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) frame now weighed barely 90 pounds (41 kg), and the FBI had to
use fingerprints to conclusively identify the body. Hughes is buried next to his parents at Glenwood
Cemetery in Houston.

References:
1. Relative Finder, associated with FamilySearch, and the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS)
2. Wikipedia.org
3. Learn more - The Real Story of Howard Hughes, The Mad Billionaire
4. LDS Family Tree attached

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