



Hugh Culverhouse had a wing of the hospital all to himself. It wasn't a matter of luxury and privilege, though the multimillionaire and owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was accustomed to both.

Culverhouse was radioactive. The walls of his room were lined with lead. He had to be quarantined in an abandoned section of the Louisiana State University Medical Center, monitored with television cameras.

His medical team wore the same protective clothing used by nuclear power plant workers. Standing near Culverhouse for two minutes was the equivalent of getting a chest X-ray.

To limit their exposure, a rotation of 65 nurses cared for him.

His rare form of lung cancer, which had spawned hundreds of tumors, had resisted all conventional treatment. In August of 1994 doctors made a last-ditch effort to save Culverhouse with a radical new treatment never tested on a human.

They infused him with 1.6 curies of iodine 131. This was five times more than the biggest dosage used to treat someone with thyroid cancer.

The iodine was attached to a hormone designed to seek out the tumors so the radiation would kill them. So much iodine was required to synthesize this biochemical smart bomb that the work was done in a "sterile hot room" in a nuclear power plant in Lima, Peru.

The medicine was flown in a lead-lined container to New Orleans at 4 a.m. A caravan of vehicles brought it to the hospital. Six hours later it flowed into Culverhouse's veins.

He thought he would walk out of the hospital a new man at age 75 - perhaps finally to divorce his wife of 52 years.

Then he could marry one of his girlfriends. But which one?

Would it be Susan Brinkley, wife of broadcaster David Brinkley?

She was one of the many women who had known his affection and generosity, receiving checks from his hidden bank account and traveling with him on his private jet.

It was all part of the secret life of "Mr. C.," whose public image was that of a generous philanthropist, an affable businessman, a lovable husband and father.

The other side of Culverhouse soon became public. He died seven days after his treatment, triggering a scandalous legal battle over his $350 million estate.

Family members and those involved closely with the dispute will not talk about the case, which culminated with a settlement earlier this month.

"Everybody in life deserves an eraser," Hugh Culverhouse Jr. said.

But court records reveal the elder Culverhouse was a man who spent his last few years estranged from his family, spending money on an assortment of female companions - even as his health failed, his football team collapsed and his creditors knocked on the door.

Hugh Culverhouse hardly looked the playboy. He was a short, cigar-smoking man with a bulbous nose and a penchant for sport jackets so garish that Bucs players debated whether they'd been fashioned out of draperies.

But Culverhouse's backwoods Southern drawl and lime-green ensembles belied a shrewd and tough businessman.

"You didn't argue with him very often," said his business manager, Stephen Story, in a court deposition. "I mean, it wasn't a wise thing to do. You made your comments and ducked."

Born in Birmingham, Ala., Culverhouse began his business career at age 11 by expanding a newspaper route with 84 subscribers into a pre-teen financial empire of 600 subscribers.

He went to the University of Alabama, where he was friends with George Wallace, with whom he boxed, and Bear Bryant, who later turned down his old friend's offer to coach the Bucs. He also met champion golfer Joy McCann there. They married in 1942, after which Culverhouse joined the Army Air Forces and became a pilot in the Pacific.

He returned to earn his law degree and work for the Alabama attorney general and then the Internal Revenue Service. Culverhouse cashed in on his knowledge of tax law by opening a private office in Jacksonville. But he built his fortune as a land banker.

In one typical venture, he paid $12.25 million for Palmer Ranch in Sarasota County in 1972. Nine years later, he sold half the 10,000 acres for $35 million.

Culverhouse borrowed heavily to swing these deals and often told his wife that bankruptcy loomed.

In 1974 Culverhouse paid the National Football League $16 million for the Bucs. He moved to Tampa nine years later. The team provided him with both a high profile and cash flow. He bled the Bucs, and the results showed on the field.

After making it to the playoffs three times between 1979 and 1983, the Bucs fell apart. Star quarterback Doug Williams left in a salary dispute.

"Winning wasn't important to him," said Williams, now a coach at Morehouse College in Atlanta. "Money was all that mattered."

The team's payroll was near the bottom of the NFL. The Bucs had a bare-bones office staff, an overworked scouting department and substandard training facilities. They became the worst team in the history of professional football - but still made up to $10 million a year. The loss of ticket revenues from disillusioned fans was offset by the low overhead of a threadbare operation.

Though cheap with the team, Culverhouse was generous elsewhere.

He gave millions to state universities, arts groups and the United Way, bestowing those gifts with much fanfare.

Another side of his generosity was more discreet.

He showered the many women in his life with lavish gifts. Their companionship was his escape from a broken family and a debt-ridden empire.

He left his financial woes with his business manager while he cavorted.

"It wasn't a lot of fun in the early '90s having to deal with our asset situation," said Story in court records. "So he went on to more pleasant things and left me to deal with a lot of those."

One pleasant diversion for Culverhouse was an attractive environmentalist in her late 30s named Charlton Ford.

She approached him seeking money to save the Florida panther and ended up with a mink coat.

Other gifts included $7,000 diamond earrings, a $6,000 bracelet and Chanel bands filled with rubies, diamonds and sapphires.

He also bought her a townhouse for $130,000. That was $10,000 more than he paid Doug Williams in the final year of his contract.

Culverhouse arranged jobs for Ford. He hired her to inspect his orange groves. Her qualifications: "I was very much an outdoor person," she testified.

Then he pulled strings to land her a job with Atlantic Records. She traveled the South scouting groups such as Collapsing Lungs and Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies.

Her qualifications: "I was born in this area."

Eventually she became the receptionist at Culverhouse's law office in Tampa. Office gossipers duly noted that she called in sick on days Culverhouse also was out. They traveled to Palm Springs, Calif., Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Key West, Orlando and New York City.

Ford later said in a deposition that Culverhouse promised to marry her and told her he had not had sex with his wife for years.

Ford said Culverhouse even asked her parents for her hand.

"He said that he felt like he had the right to be happy, and he had never really been happy before until me . . . "

But he never did divorce his wife. Ford said the strain of a relationship with a married man pushed her into a drinking and drug problem. Culverhouse sent her to the Betty Ford Clinic.

"Was he a big believer in therapy?" an attorney later asked.

"Maybe for everybody but himself," she replied.

Culverhouse also became romantically involved with Patricia Smith, a cocktail waitress at an exclusive country club in Tampa. He hired her to photograph his orange groves.

In February 1988, George Sims, a co-pilot of Culverhouse's private jet, was flying his boss, with Smith on board. Sims walked through the cabin toward the bathroom: "When I walked in he was fondling the breasts of Ms. Patricia Smith," he later testified. "He had his hands physically inside of her blouse massaging her breast. "He . . . quickly removed those when I walked in, turned about the color of those red M&Ms; there and proceeded to rub her shoulders and explain to me he was giving her a massage."

Sims says it became "a comedy" sneaking Culverhouse's companions on and off the plane. The plane crew would "get them on the airplane and hidden before he (Culverhouse) got there. And once we came back and landed in Tampa, we had to make sure he got off the airplane and out of the area before they got off the plane because they couldn't be seen deplaning together."

Another pilot once commented to Sims: "It's like he's got a girl in every port."

Joy Culverhouse testified she never knew of her husband's infidelities. Later she told reporters: "I'd like to pull him out of the grave and shoot him."

Her son had known of his father's infidelities but did not tell his mother, to spare her feelings.

Hugh Jr. was furious when his father romanced Hugh Jr.'s sister-in-law in the mid-1980s. He wrote his father two blistering letters urging him to stop.

By the early '90s, Culverhouse was estranged from his family. Hugh Jr. had left his father's law practice. Culverhouse's daughter, Gay, did not meet his expectations when he hired her as the Bucs' president. She moved to Ohio. Culverhouse and Joy each kept to their own separate areas of their sprawling condominium.

One night when Joy was in New York getting a hip replacement, Culverhouse had Charlton Ford over, according to testimony from his personal assistant.

The Culverhouses also had a $730,000 condo in Miami, where they befriended neighbors David Brinkley, the ABC newscaster, and his wife, Susan.

A familiar pattern soon emerged.

Culverhouse got Susan Brinkley a job decorating two of his real estate projects in Sarasota. They took two vacations to Africa. Susan Brinkley began telling her friends that she and Culverhouse were planning to marry.

Said Hugh Jr. in court: "She intended to marry my dad, and she loved him, and she kept a photo of him - I don't know how the husband allowed it - but she kept a photo of him hanging on the wall in her bedroom in Miami."

A few months after their second trip to Africa in August 1992, Culverhouse learned he was dying.

A tumor had been removed from his lung in 1990. But by December 1992 the cancer had spread to both lungs.

Susan Brinkley accompanied Culverhouse on trips to seek a cure. They even consulted with New Age healer Deepak Chopra.

The football owner then opted for the Hail Mary pass, the radioactive treatment. His son testified that his father thought he would be cured and then would marry either Susan Brinkley or Ford.

"I think he planned to marry either or both - he might have become Mormon . . ." said Hugh Jr.

Culverhouse had laid the groundwork to remarry, his son said.

For years, Culverhouse had tried to get his wife to sign a post-nuptial agreement. She refused. Now, she was wavering.

"He was sick, and he said that the banks are probably going to take over, and I want you to have something," she testified. "And he said, 'you could just end up with nothing because the banks are going to take over. I'm in terrible, dire straits.' "

She signed in February 1993. The agreement left her with their $2 million Tampa condominium, $5 million in payments and her jewelry, worth another $2 million.

But she signed away control over his $350 million estate - which he then transferred into a trust under the control of three business confidants. They were to manage his businesses and give any investment income to Joy. Upon her death, the estate would be divided among the children and charities.

The first check written on the trust account, however, went to former girlfriend Patricia Smith, the country club waitress turned photographer. She got $150,000 to keep their affair quiet.

Culverhouse died weeks later.

None of his mistresses was by his bedside. Neither was anyone from his family.

His son and Joy had visited him three times at the hospital but found it distressing to see Culverhouse strapped down with "funnels and tubes" everywhere. "We went to New Orleans, and it killed me; it killed my mother; it killed him . . . " Hugh Jr. said. "He thought he was getting seven to eight years with this new treatment. In fact, it was a silver bullet to his heart and killed him."

Culverhouse had been dead only a day when Hugh Jr. confronted Stephen Story and Fred Cone, his father's associates who had helped him draw up the post-nuptial agreement and the trust.

"I spent about three hours screaming at both of them for what they did to my mother," he said in a court deposition.

Culverhouse Jr. got his mother to sue both men to reclaim control of the estate, saying they deceived her into signing an agreement she did not understand.

On Feb. 6, two days after the trial began in Tampa, the parties settled. The three trustees - Story, Cone and former NFL official Jack Donlan - gave up their posts in exchange for $9 million.

More than two years after his death, Hugh Culverhouse is finally out of debt. His estate flourishes, in part because of the sale of the Bucs for a record $192 million. The team appears headed for respectability on the field, but the new owners claim they have lost almost $100 million.

Hugh Jr. now sits as a trustee on his father's estate.

His mother lives in their Tampa condominium, walking six miles a day on her treadmill, enjoying the say she now has over which charities will benefit from her husband's millions.

Daughter Gay is president of Notre Dame College in Cleveland.

They were the family Culverhouse lost.

Said his pilot, Sims: "He told me once that he wished he could trade his money for my relationship with my family.

"He said, 'I'd trade you my money. Here in later life, I've realized that I have severed relationships with my family that I wish, I - if I could give away my money and get that back - I wish I had that back.' "

Culverhouse does live on at the Louisiana State Medical Center, where doctors are planning to give another patient the radioactive hormone. They learned much from treating him.

They have named the medicine in his honor: Cultope.

Copyright © 2019, Orlando Sentinel