Posted on 02/10/2008 5:52:39 AM PST by Dysart
For more than 75 years the Hunt family has meant big money in Big D, and often big news, too.
Eccentric oilman H.L. Hunt built the world's largest fortune and secretly supported three families at the same time. His children built Reunion Tower and the Mansion on Turtle Creek, coined the term "Super Bowl," infamously failed to corner the silver market, and recently signed an eyebrow-raising oil deal in Iraq.
But the branch of his family led by his eldest daughter, Margaret Hunt Hill, lived quietly. She flew coach, attended charity galas and became the glue that held the family together. Last summer after she died at 91, her heirs went to war, pushing a private family into the public arena. One of her grandchildren, Albert Galatyn Hill III, sued almost the entire family, accusing his relatives of conspiring to plunder the family trusts and defraud the Internal Revenue Service. Al III – who's lost his jobs with the family business and been cut off from most of his inheritance – says he's defending his great-grandfather's legacy by blocking a plan to divvy up the trusts, which own Hunt Petroleum.
His relatives accuse Al III of trying to publicly embarrass his family for a payoff to support a lifestyle extravagant even for a descendant of one of the world's richest families.
At stake: two trusts, belonging to Margaret and her late brother Hassie, with an estimated worth of $2 billion to $4 billion.
"How can you fight over this much money?" asks Lyda Hill, Margaret's daughter and a defendant in the suit. "There's just no way. It doesn't make sense."
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
For anyone interested in reading more about the greatest U.S. oilfield discovery you should read “The Last Boom” by Clark & Halbouty.
While the rest of the nation was suffering through the Great Depression in the early 30’s, Kilgore and E. Texas in general never had to experience that level of misery due to the huge boom.
Some would argue, that without finding this oilfield, we would all speaking german right now. It was that important to our efforts during WWII.
I have read that book. Very good account of the “Black Giant.”
Your take may have merit.
I live in Fort Worth and have known many people who worked for the Hunt family. Not for one of their companies, but the family itself. What the media says about them is nothing compared to what these people have said.
This has nothing to do with conservatism. It has everything to do with one very screwed up family.
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