A Man So Rich

It would be an un-Texan understatement to say that Texans boast. It was probably a Texan who was so tall that he had to climb a ladder to shave; it was undoubtedly his brother who was so small that it took two men and a boy to see him. So when they heard that Hugh Roy Cullen gave away upwards of $100 million one night last week, Texans recognized a true son of the Lone Star State.

Sixty-five-year-old Roy Cullen started life as a $3-a-week underling in the office of a San Antonio cotton broker. In 1911, he switched to real estate and then to oil.

Like legendary Paul Bunyan, Roy Cullen found a way to make money out of dry fields. Paul Bunyan had hitched his blue ox, Babe, to a dry hole, pulled the hole out of the ground, and sawed it up for pestholes. Cullen's method was simpler --and more effective. When he saw a dry hole he just drilled deeper.

Time & again he brought in flowing wells in fields which had been abandoned. He loved the thrill of finding a gusher, the throaty roar and sudden spout of oil through the derrick. It got so that he lost interest in pumping wells, and sold them off so he could look for more gushers.

A plain man despite a flair for fancy clothes, Roy Cullen found that he had more money than he knew what to do with. He built himself a big house in Houston's swank River Oaks section, installed indirect lighting and expensive bric-a-brac and landscaped it with costly azalea bushes, each with its own sprinkling system. He provided generously for his four married daughters and gave $10 million to the University of Houston and local hospitals.

Last week's gift, in the form of oil properties estimated to have a total yield of 40 to 80 million barrels, will establish the Cullen Foundation. The money will go for various educational, health, and charitable purposes, but chiefly to the University of Houston and the new Texas Medical Center. Said Cullen: "My wife and I are that selfish we wish to see our money spent during our lifetime, so that we may derive great pleasure from it."

On sober second thought, conservatives guessed that the Cullen Foundation would net no more than $50 million after production costs. True Texans disowned such small talk. Their guess was well over $100 million, putting the Cullen Foundation among the country's three or four largest.

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