Howard Hughes

I have met several people who knew Howard Hughes including my Aunt Vonnie who dated him when she was a starlet in Hollywood during the nineteen thirties. I remember once when my folks took me to Hollywood to visit my grandmother Q.B. Nickols who wouldn't let us go in the house. She said, "You have to wait outside until Howard Hughes leaves. He's in there with your Aunt Vonnie. They are sitting on the couch together."

Once I met a man who felt really close to Howard Hughes. He had retired, but he was a man Hughes depended on for more than thirty years. He explained to me, "Howard Hughes was a man who had a genius for inventing. He put his ideas on paper, had them patented, and saw many of them come to fruition. As his favorite patent attorney, I was the one he called whenever he had a bright new idea. Over the years we patented many of his inventions. I cannot even remember all of them. Howard and I were not social friends because our relationship was strictly business. However, we knew each other for so long, and the business we were doing was so important to him, that he learned to trust me perhaps more than anyone else he knew. I trusted and respected him all those years too. I retired before he went into isolation because of personality problems and never saw him again. But he asked to see me shortly before his death."

The lawyer continued, "I was in California when Howard was living in a Las Vegas hotel. He was one of the wealthiest men in the world, and he was a private man. I have a feeling he may have been in some sort of captivity. Perhaps he was held because he was having psychological problems. I don't know too much about it but they say he had obsessive behavior with a fear of germs and went around wearing surgical rubber gloves and all that sort of thing. Anyway, somebody may have been holding him a prisoner when he got word to me he wanted to see me. Apparently it was about having one of his new ideas patented. He asked me to fly to Las Vegas and meet with him at the hotel where he lived. I sent word back to him that I was retired but that I would consider coming to see him and let him know within a few days."

[The man telling me this story began to cry and he wiped tears from his eyes as he continued.] "I called him back in three days to tell him I had decided to help him with the patent, but I was too late. They had already taken him out of the country. I should have gone right away when he called for me. Maybe he had called me hoping I would help free him and bring him back to California. But I didn't help him, and they took him away. Oh, yes, I know he was sick. But he was a good man and I liked him. After they took him out of the United States he never returned. It wasn't long after that when everyone learned he was dead. I feel bad, like, maybe I could have saved him."