Howard Hughes & Catholic Theology
At the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas
I never thought I’d hear the name of Howard Hughes mentioned in connection with Catholic theology, but here we are. It’s one of those direct/indirect connections that amuses.
Did you know the theology department at the University of St. Thomas in Houston calls home in the same house that young Howard Hughes, Jr. also called home? It’s true.
Built in 1918 by Howard Hughes, Sr., the “Hughes House” sits on the university campus at 3921 Yoakum Boulevard.
Sonny (Howard, Jr’s nickname) was thirteen when the house was built, and while he attended several different boarding schools as well as Rice University, this was where he called home throughout his teen years - 1918-1925.
And it was the family home when his parents died: his mother, Allene, in 1922 at thirty-eight, and his father in 1924 at fifty-four.
According to Peter Brown and Pat Broeske, in Howard Hughes: The Untold Story, when Allene died, Howard, Sr., begged Allene’s sister, Annette, then thirty-one, to remain single “and devote the rest of her life to raising Howard.” Allene agreed to a one-year trial, but Sonny was already seventeen at the time and by age nineteen, just months after his father’s death, he was the sole owner of Hughes Tool Company, and in 1925 married and moved to California. Sonny kept the home so that his aunt could live there.
The university, founded in 1947 by the Basilian Fathers (Congregation of St. Basil, founded in France in 1822), purchased the house in the early 1950s and it’s been the home of the theology department since.
If these walls could talk.