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Show j "Selfish" Oil Titan Gives Millions Away Hardly anybody blinked an eye when Hugh Roy Cullen gave two and a quarter million dollars to the University of Houston last winter. Hardly anybody in Texas, anyway. This big-hearted, impulsive, outspoken, ruggedly individualistic oil millionaire has given away over $160,000,000. In one 48-hour' period he gave over a million dollars to each of four separate hospitals, setting an all-time record in generosity. And in 1947, he set up the Cullen Foundation to dispense his wealth in syste matic if somewhat overwhelm- ing fashion. "My wife and I are pretty selfish about our giving," he explained ex-plained recently. "We want to see our money spent while we're still alive, so we can enjoy the spending." The story of what one newspaperman called "the biggest- heart in Texas" is told in a new book, "Hugh Roy Cullen, Cul-len, A Story of American Opportunity." Oppor-tunity." Cullen acquired his wealth as a wildcatter in oil, starting from scratch, with little more than courage, faith, obstinacy and uncanny un-canny instinct. His philanthropies philanthro-pies started early in life. "I've always wanted to help people," he says. "I guess I was as eager to help people when I was poor as I am now. It is my conviction convic-tion that unless a man is generous gen-erous to begin with, the richer he gets the tighter he gets." Years of hard work and determination deter-mination made Cullen the uncrowned un-crowned king of the wildcatters, a legend in his own time. By his middle years, still drilling vigorously, vigor-ously, his unbounded wealth was matched by his unstinting phi- ' g, : , t ' - i t . -:-:-::w-:-::::::: . Hugh Roy Cullen lanthropies, since he felt that the riches he had extracted from American soil should be used to serve the needs of his less fortunate for-tunate fellow-citizens. As Speaker of the House Joseph Jos-eph Martin commented on his absorbing life story, "The story of Hugh Roy Cullen should be required reading for any pessimists pessi-mists who believe that America is a nation of vanishing horizons. hori-zons. ... As long as our country coun-try produces men of the character char-acter of Roy Cullen, it will go forward." |