Hobo Jungle

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Putting aside "the issue" the old boy did alright for himself. Dressed nice, had a company that made toys for him, made movies and got to hump a lot of Hollywood starlets along the way.

If only we'd achieved so much...

Dressing nice would be an achievement for many of us...........

If you could see me now...

Grey flannel bathrobe and pink bunny slippers?

[healey36]

Damn, you're good...

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Exactly how I've dreamed of looking my whole life.

[rogruth]

Exactly how I've dreamed of looking my whole life.

Really? Why?

[robert.]

Hey!!! No cracking on Howard...he and his legacy paid a lot of my bills over thirty-five years...



He was da man...

Healey

Do you know who his flight engineer is? He's famous in some circles.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Exactly how I've dreamed of looking my whole life.

Really? Why?

You know I'm being facetious , right?

[rogruth]

Exactly how I've dreamed of looking my whole life.

Really? Why?

You know I'm being facetious , right?

You saw ,right?

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Really? Why?

You know I'm being facetious , right?

You saw ,right?

Yup. Just had to be sure.

[Mitch]

Putting aside "the issue" the old boy did alright for himself. Dressed nice, had a company that made toys for him, made movies and got to hump a lot of Hollywood starlets along the way.

If only we'd achieved so much...

And wasn't he the mentally ill genius who started and built TransWorldAirlines, only to have it taken from him by the "corporate" perfectly sane board and then it went bankrupt.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Damn, you're good...

Hooray! You've put on pants!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Putting aside "the issue" the old boy did alright for himself. Dressed nice, had a company that made toys for him, made movies and got to hump a lot of Hollywood starlets along the way.

If only we'd achieved so much...

And wasn't he the mentally ill genius who started and built TransWorldAirlines, only to have it taken from him by the "corporate" perfectly sane board and then it went bankrupt.

Not quite - he gave it up in the 60's and Carl Icahn got control of TWA in the late 80's; all the dereg stuff killed TWA and others and the 3rd(?) bankruptcy saw it acquired by AA.

[webenda]

Jan. 31, 1992 TWA files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors. (1)

Nov. 3, 1993 TWA emerges from bankruptcy.

June 30, 1995 TWA files for bankruptcy protection a second time. (2)

Aug. 1995 TWA emerges from bankruptcy with a plan to reorganize and cut its debt 30 percent.

Jan. 10, 2001 AMR Corp.'s American Airlines said it will acquire most assets of TWA and provide financing for a TWA bankruptcy filing. (3)

Reference: http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=66895
http://money.cnn.com/2001/01/10/deals/amr_twa/

[healey36]

Howard was long gone by the time I joined Hughes, shortly after GM acquired it for $5 billion. That was in 1985...a few years later the company started to reinvent itself in the face of declining defense business. They acquired us (Digital Communications Corp) in 1987 from Microwave Associates. Being 97% commercial we dovetailed with Hughes' plan to diversify.

Howard was really smart in a number of ways. One was that he sized Hughes Aircraft to be manageable in scope. He had lots of opportunity to grow the thing into a massive conglomerate but he never let that happen. He had a great vision of what he wanted the company to be, what he wanted to be involved with, never let it grow beyond that vision. That changed after his death and new corporate management took over.

Another was that he set the company up as a non-profit. What you say? Yup, he set up the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and diverted all of the "profits" generated by Hughes Aircraft to Hughes Medical. He thereby qualified the company as a non-profit which gave him massive tax and filing benefits. Hughes Medical Institute and its massive endowment remains in existence to the current day and is still one of the largest funding bodies of medical research in the nation.

At last count the aggregate value of Hughes' holdings have been sold for north of $150 billion (DirecTV, a Hughes company originally, in its final iteration was acquired/merged with AT&T in the last year for $67 billion alone)...I guess GM's much decried acquisition of the company by Roger Smith, CEO, wasn't so stupid after all, lol...

Healey

[webenda]

At last count the aggregate value of Hughes' holdings have been sold for north of $150 billion (DirecTV, a Hughes company originally, in its final iteration was acquired/merged with AT&T in the last year for $67 billion alone)...I guess GM's much decried acquisition of the company by Roger Smith, CEO, wasn't so stupid after all, lol...

Healey

The value of Hughes Company pieces just keeps growing and growing. GM did not do too bad itself. After paying $5 billion for Hughes in 1985, G.M. sold its pieces for $9.5 billion to Raytheon, $3.75 billion to Boeing, and $26 billion to EchoStar.

Reference: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/busin ... ategy.html

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Hughes Medical Institute and its massive endowment remains in existence to the current day and is still one of the largest funding bodies of medical research in the nation.

Painfully aware of it; you have not had a fun year or 3 until you have had to suffer through having an HHMI fellow in your research group - everybody and everything is beneath their notice and they must get issued a wheelbarrow just to haul around their sense of entitlement.

One and done and never, ever again, and I don't care that that they are fully funded.