Should shake things up a bit if true -- from the Lincoln, NE Journal Star:
Musick: Howard Hughes lived onEven if it is not true, it sounds like a great story.
There are a lot of woolly, fabulous tales out there about Howard Hughes, the famously reclusive, eccentric billionaire.
And the Wikipedia version of his life is not the only one that "needs additional citations for verification."
The Martin Scorsese movie "The Aviator" recently advanced the images and legends of Hughes and his obsessive compulsions.
Hughes officially died in April 1976, an emaciated, drug-addicted, long-haired, tragic, lonely old man who proved to some people money couldn't buy happiness.
But not really, according to a new book, "Boxes: The Secret Life of Howard Hughes," by Douglas Wellman, assistant dean of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, based on research done by the former commander of the Nebraska Air Guard.
The book says eight years before his "death," Hughes substituted a Las Vegas derelict for himself and escaped his identity yet continued to operate his business affairs until his stand-in died and his family overturned his famous will in court. It says Hughes spent his exile in the Panama Canal Zone, the Florida Panhandle, Arizona and Alabama in the privacy he craved. He assumed the identity of aircraft maintenance supervisor Verner "Nik" Nicely, the name of a real person who conveniently disappeared while working with or for the CIA in Panama.
Reportedly, as they say.
Hughes died in 2001, at age 96, according to the book.
Hughes had lost access to his fortune but won the heart of a woman, married her and stayed married 31 years until his death, according to the book.
The wife, Eva McLelland, who died last year, told her story to Mark Musick, who has been documenting this off-road saga for almost a decade. Wellman wrote the book for him.
"It is a wild story," Musick acknowledged. "It changes history."
This is the same calm, clear-headed Mark Musick who flew F-4s, commanded the Nebraska Air Guard for four years, worked for Stratcom and was keynoter at Lincoln's 2009 Patriot Day observance. He is a retired major general and is chief operating officer for a venture capital company.
Not some nut.
But what is even more interesting is that Howard was really Elvis!