History

A short synopsis of Hughes Aircraft

The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major aerospace and defense contractor founded in 1932 by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California as a division of Hughes Tool Company. In 1948 a new division of Hughes was created, the Aerospace Group. In 1953 the Howard Hughes Medical Institute was formed, and Hughes Aircraft was chartered as a subsidiary of the foundation. The Aerospace Group’s business expanded to include facilities in El Segundo, California, and in 1969 Hughes established business operations in Aurora, CO. When Howard Hughes died in 1976 he did so, leaving no will. In 1984 the Delaware Court of Chancery appointed eight trustees to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. They decided to sell Hughes Aircraft. In 1985 the HHMI sold Hughes Aircraft to General Motors. In 1985, General Motors, having acquired Hughes Aircraft for $5.2 billion dollars, merged Hughes with GM’s Delco Electronics to form the independent subsidiary known as the “Hughes Electronics Corporation.” In 1994 Hughes Electronics introduced DirecTV, the world’s first high-powered DBS. By 1995 Hughes Electronics “Hughes Space and Communications” division became the world’s largest supplier of commercial satellites. In 1997 GM transferred Delco Electronics to its “Delphi Automotive Systems” business, and later that year sold its Hughes Aircraft assets to Raytheon for $9.5 Billion. The remaining companies remained under the “Hughes Electronics” name as a part of GM. The aerospace and defense operations merged with Raytheon, which also acquired one half of the Hughes Research Laboratories. Raytheon remains the descendant operations of Hughes Aircraft in Aurora, CO. In 2000 the Boeing Company purchased three units within Hughes Electronics Corp.: Hughes Space and Communications Co., Hughes Electron Dynamics, and Spectrolab Inc., in addition to Hughes Electronics’ interest in HRL, the company’s primary research laboratory. The four units joined Boeing Satellite Systems, a company subsidiary, later becoming the Satellite Development Center, part of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. 1 _______________ 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Electronics

Hughes Aircraft/HARA Arrives in Colorado

The initial members of the Hughes Aircraft management team (photo above) arrived in Colorado beginning in 1969. This photo taken in 1970. The facility, while having attained functional status in 1970, officially went operational in March of 1971. The Aurora, CO chapter of the Hughes Aircraft Retiree’s Association (HARA) began as an extension of the Los Angeles, CA HARA organization in 1986. Colorado’s HARA remains as the social organization of those members who began as Hughes employees, who were then inherited by GM when they purchased the business, and who finally became Raytheon employees during the last transition of what was once Hughes Aircraft. The original organization’s name, HARA, was extended to reflect the inherited namesake, Raytheon, and became known as the Hughes Aircraft, Raytheon Retirees Association (HARRA).

HARA Denver’s Web Site

Jim Tomlin put together the first HARA Denver web site around 1998...just as the Internet was finding its legs. Using his own resources, Jim located a "free" server in Canada on which to host his pages, and obtained the domain name "rocky-hara.com" to use with the site. The site was hosted on a mail server in lieu of a web server at the time, and as a result was very slow and unresponsive. Special HTML-coded items could not be added due to the incompatibility of the server with HTML code and/or web pages. When Jim passed away George Smith undertook the effort to take possession of Jim’s web site assets, a process made impossibly difficult due to Jim not having left his server login credentials with anyone. Eleanor Blandin got in touch with Jim’s wife seeking Jim’s credentials, only to discover Jim’s wife had no knowledge of them. Only by the good graces and understanding of our situation did Jim’s web site tech support finally cooperate with us, granting the needed credentials. It took almost a year for George to regain Jim’s web page assets and get his website back up and running on Jim’s original server. On November 19th 2003 George downloaded and re-hosted Jim’s files on his web page server in efforts to enable the use of current-day HTML technologies and capabilities, updated the site’s “look and feel” in keeping with the tools of the day, and added some new content. The web site received around 2,000+ visitors over the next few ensuing years, however, due to the lack of content updating/refreshing, visitor numbers eventually fell off to next to zero. At HARA’s request George had stopped adding the newsletter to the website out of privacy concerns, a feature originally implemented by Jim Tomlin. The web site then went mostly dormant for several years due to the lack of new content; material inputs or feedback of of any kind. After several years of absence and having attended the September 2019, Annual HARRA picnic, and having taken (along with Jim Lillard) several photos of the event, then searching for a way to share the photos, George looked to the old HARA website as a good place to do that. However, the old HARA website was showing its age and was suffering from a lack of care and feeding. Before posting the photos to the web site it was obvious that the old HARA website needed to be dusted off a bit…updated. George updated the web site’s look, feel and content, included a little more “eye candy” on the pages. Links were updated, information added, Phyllis Hall and Jim Baron offered additional content for the site. We were up and running once again!