A statue of legendary Texas oilman H.L. Hunt at the East Texas Oil Museum, in Kilgore, Texas. A street scene inside the museum, on the campus of Kilgore College, depicts "Boomtown, U.S.A., and includes a small theater where a movie shows how wells extract the subterranean "black gold." Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, Jr., known throughout his life as "H. L. Hunt," was a Texas oil tycoon and conservative Republican political activist. By trading poker winnings for oil rights, he ultimately secured title to much of the East Texas Oil Field, one of the world's largest oil deposits, in the 1930s. From it and his other acquisitions, he accrued a fortune that was among the world's largest; at the time of his death, he was reputed to have the highest net worth of any individual in the world. Photo Credit: Carol M. Highsmith / WikiMedia Commons
By Ken Bridges Special to the Herald Democrat “Money is just a way of keeping score,” oil baron H.L. Hunt was once reported to have…
