The man who allegedly left one-sixteenth of his fortune to a Utah gas station owner, Melvin Dummar, was both an eccentric and a star. Howard Hughes lived big as a young man, taking risks as a pioneering aviator and transforming a family business into a billion-dollar empire.

As an old man, Hughes was a sought-after recluse who owned all sorts of things, including gambling resorts, acres of land and a television station, according to newspaper reports. He was once the richest man in Nevada. But his employees rarely saw him. They just received phone calls and handwritten notes.

Associated Press writer Ralph Dighton wrote in a 1968 biography: "His life is a multicolored checkerboard of careers: a record-smashing daredevil in the golden age of aviation and aircraft designer; a Hollywood playboy and a hard-driving producer of frequently profitable movies; a rich man's shy and gangling son; and a calculating wizard who parlayed a paltry million or so into a vast industrial empire."

Hughes was born in Houston on Christmas Day 1905. He was described as a lousy student, but after his father died, he inherited a majority share of the family business, Hughes Tool Co. The business was profitable, allowing Hughes to purchase shares in other companies and start his own, including Hughes Aircraft, founded in 1936. The company became one of the fierce competitors in America's aerospace industry.

Hughes took flying lessons at age 14. He set aviation speed records and made an around-the-world flight. He also was an Academy Award-winning movie producer, with such hits as "Hell's Angels," "Scarface," "Two Arabian Knights" and "The Outlaw."

In 1966, Hughes moved to Las Vegas. Almost two years later, Dummar claims, he picked Hughes up, alone and injured, in the middle of a Nevada desert.

Myram Borders, a UPI reporter, wrote of Hughes' sudden departure from the Nevada city in 1971: "Hughes' departure was as mysterious as his arrival in the middle of a November night in 1966. A private train stopped on the outskirts of Las Vegas four-and-a-half years ago, a stretcher was loaded into a waiting car. A short time later, a group of men walked into the Desert Inn Hotel on the Las Vegas "Strip," carrying someone (or something) on a stretcher covered with a white sheet. All eyes were directed at the stretcher, while Hughes apparently was in the group walking alongside."

In 1976, Hughes died. Three weeks later, a handwritten will was found on a desk in the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The so-called "Mormon Will." It left instructions that one-sixteenth of Hughes' fortune would go to the LDS Church; another one-sixteenth to Dummar.

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Hughes' family claimed in court that it was a hoax. After a lengthy court battle, a jury agreed.

A key factor in the ruling was that Dummar later said he himself delivered the will to the church headquarters. He said a stranger gave him the will and he didn't know what to do with it, so he brought it to the church offices and left it there.

A 1980 Oscar winning moving "Melvin and Howard" portrays the purported encounter Dummar had with Hughes in the Nevada desert. A recent film, "The Aviator," portrays the life of Hughes.


E-mail: nwarburton@desnews.com

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