Hanging Together

Even by the high-rolling standards of Las Vegas, it was a huge gamble. The players sat in a garishly decorated room alongside the Strip, pondering moves involving the highest sum ever played for in Nevada's green-felt gaming world. At stake: the Howard Hughes fortune, estimated at $2.5 billion.

The players were potential rivals.

On the one side were the old-line executives of the Summa Corp., to which Hughes had transferred most of his holdings after selling the Hughes Tool Co. in 1972. On the other was William Rice Lummis, 47, a Houston attorney, who is Hughes' cousin. He is the representative of a small handful of Hughes' heirs, most of whom had not even seen the eccentric recluse for 38 years prior to his death.

Each side had its hopes. The Summa triumvirate of Executive Vice President Frank William (Bill) Gay, 55, General Counsel Chester Davis, 66, and Nadine Henley, 69, Hughes' former administrative assistant, want to continue to run the empire. Under their plan, Hughes' assets would be transferred entirely to the tax-exempt Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and they, as trustees, would remain in command.

But Hughes left no authenticated will. Since his death, on April 5 in a jet ambulance over Texas, at least 36 purported Hughes wills have surfaced, but none of them appears to be genuine. Summa conducted a worldwide search but failed to turn up a signed document. The search did, however, yield an unsigned carbon of a 1954 will, written at the time Hughes set up the medical institute and transferred to it the ownership of Hughes Aircraft, then worth about $250 million in net assets. The strategy of the Summa people seems to be to present this carbon copy to a probate court as the best available evidence of Hughes' intentions. The apparent aim is to block the legal offensive being prepared by Hughes' former aide Noah Dietrich, with whom Hughes split in 1956. Dietrich was named executor of the Hughes estate in the so-called Mormon will that appeared in the Salt Lake City headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last April, and he has vowed to prove the validity of the will in court.

If neither the Summa carbon nor the Mormon will is accepted by a court as authentic, Hughes' estate will be divided among his next of kin; the chief benefactor would be Hughes' only surviving aunt, Mrs. Frederick Lummis, 85, a Houston widow who is William's mother. Even after taxes, the Lummises would probably collect about $300 million apiece. Understandably, the family is eager to have Howard's last place of U.S. residence declared to be Nevada, since it has no state inheritance tax. Texas and California, which have such taxes, are claiming him.

Obviously, both the Hughes heirs and the Summa executives have decided they will be better off working together than squabbling over the empire. Their accommodation was preceded by a reconciliation between the maternal and paternal sides of the Hughes clan. At the Las Vegas meeting, William Lummis, who bears a striking resemblance to Hughes as a young man, was elected chairman of Summa. Lummis worked for years as a lawyer in the Houston firm of Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones, which has handled Hughes family matters for half a century. Bill Gay was elected president, and the rest of the penthouse old guard retained titles in the executive hierarchy.

Old Man's Whim. Summa will need all the solidarity it can manage. The company faces a number of problems, including its only marginally successful casinos and a lawsuit involving Air West, the airline Hughes purchased in 1968. Most urgently, the company must convert itself from being an old man's whim into a real moneymaker. If the Lummis-Summa ploy to escape inheritance taxes fails, the company will be forced to pay an estimated $750 million to the Federal Government.

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