Another unlikely story

So, I'm perusing the Fall 2009 issue of Nevada Silver & Blue, the alumni magazine of the University of Nevada, Reno. I get this magazine because I am a proud alumnus of that university.

This issue contains an article titled, "Industrialist Howard Hughes Played a Major Role in Establishment of the School of Medicine."

This much, of course, is true. Hughes donated a couple hundred thousand dollars starting in 1969 to get the medical school off the ground.

But then I came across the following, as told by the school's founding dean, Dr. George Smith:

"I talked to Mr. Hughes directly one time after he gave the commitment. I went to his penthouse in Las Vegas and talked to him through a window to thank him."

This, as most Hughes historians believe, is highly unlikely. Hughes saw very few people during his four years at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. He was a recluse and did not greet visitors.

Mr. Smith, no doubt respected in his field and all that, either is not telling the truth about this scenario or he was somehow fooled into believing he was talking to Hughes when he was not.

It is very common, I have found, for people to feel a need to tell people they met with Hughes while he was in Las Vegas. I don't know why but otherwise respectable people try to perpetuate these almost-certain fictions.

You can read the alumni magazine article here.

Hughes key character in latest Ellroy novel

Novelist James Ellroy's latest novel, Blood's a Rover, is the last in a trilogy about America's criminal underworld. The first two novels were American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand.

According to marketing descriptions and reviews of the new book, Howard Hughes is a prominent character, covering his buying of Las Vegas casinos during the late 1960s.

It's important to note that Ellroy writes fiction. He uses real-life characters such as Hughes and Richard Nixon, but he has created an alternate, speculative history here. Although Ellroy's speculative take may be entrancing or persuasive as representing something closer to "what really happened," in the end it is fiction, intended primarily for entertainment, not enlightenment.