Quote Originally Posted by minnesota man
It totally sucks to get busted. Is it true that Howard Hughes felt sorry for the Kennedys after the assassinations and contributed to their causes and wealth? <--No sarcasm. Just asking if anyone knows.
I've never heard or read anything of that sort about Howard Hughes having donated to the Kennedys personally, and I somehow doubt he did that. I've read volumes of books about the Kennedys, and in all those biographies, I've never seen even a hint of this story. I've only read two Hughes biographies, so I know much less about him. That doesn't mean it's not true. But I still rather doubt it. Now that you've drawn my attention to this question, though, Minnesota Man, I'm eager to find out for sure. I may write to someone who'd know and see if I can find out. Someone like Doris Kearns Goodwin, who, if I send a provocative enough email through her publisher, would probably answer me.

There are a couple of reasons why my guess would be that Hughes didn't give any money away to the Kennedys personally. For one thing, Hughes didn't like to part with money. That's why he had $2 billion when he died. Also, Hughes and old Joe Kennedy (the father of RFK and JFK) tended to run very hot and cold, with far more cold periods than hot ones. Neither was an easy man to get along with. They'd at various times been rivals in the movie industry and were also rivals for the affections of several of the movies stars they nailed. Hughes would have been fairly well aware of how much money old Joe had (about $25 million), and so he would have had a fairly good idea that Joe's sons and daughters were reasonably well-fixed. Joe's holdings would have been a huge amount in the early and mid-sixties even if they didn't come close to Hughes' own fortune. Heck, that's a lot now! I do know Hughes was politically sympathetic with the Kennedy sons; I have read that in several places. So perhaps he did contribute to their political campaigns.

By the time JFK and RFK were at the peaks of their careers and were assasinated, Hughes was solidly entrenched in his crazy years, and even though their JFK and RFK's trust funds weren't immense, they still were quite rich by most other standards of the day, so I would think another rich man, assuming Hughes was lucid enough to consider degrees of wealth in others, might have assumed their families were well set. The bulk of old Joe's money, of course, didn't pass onto his surviving children and his deceased children's heirs till he himself died in 1969.

Now I've just got to know the answer to this question. I'm going to do some research and see if my theories are right or wrong. Either way, I'll report back if I can find anything definitive. Inquiring minds want to know!