H.R. “Bum” Bright, a longtime Dallas-based businessman, died Saturday night at his Highland Park home after a long illness. Mr. Bright was 84 at the time of his death.
Although Mr. Bright was best known for his ownership of the Dallas Cowboys NFL football club from 1984 to 1989, Mr. Bright was one of Dallas’ most prominent businessmen for many years and also a longtime member of the Texas A&M University Board of Regents, of which he was chairman from 1981 to 1985. A&M was one of Mr. Bright’s main philanthropic causes and the beneficiary of a $25 million gift from Mr. Bright during the mid-1990s’. Mr. Bright’s other main charitable cause was the Children’s Medical Center Dallas, to which he made a key $5 million donation in 1999 that led to the creation of a facility at the hospital that specializes in treating ear, nose and throat ailments.
Mr. Bright was trained as a petroleum engineer, received his degree from A&M in 1943, and made his first forture as the independent exploration and production sector of the oil and gas business. However, Mr. Bright proceeded to build an even bigger fortune in a nationwide trucking business, real estate, banks, and savings and loans. It was the investments in financial institutions that led to some of Mr. Bright’s most notorious business failures.
Mr. Bright lost about $30 million in the failure of RepublicBank Corp. in the late 1980’s, and another $200 million in the 1989 failure of Bright Banc Savings Association. Federal regulators seized control of Bright Banc during the costly cleanup that followed the collapse of the Texas savings and loan industry. Years of litigation over the failures ensued.
Mr. Bright’s influence was also substantial in the sports world. Mr. Bright engineered the process that resulted in the firing of Texas A&M football coach Tom Wilson and the hiring of Jackie Sherrill to a then record contract in 1981. Although Coach Sherrill returned A&M to prominence in the Southwest Conference and college football, he was forced to resign five years later under the spectre of NCAA violations that ultimately landed the A&M program on probation.
Similarly, Mr. Bright’s sale of the Cowboys to Jerry Jones in 1989 was the beginning of the end for legendary Cowboys coach Tom Landry, who was unceremoniously canned by Jones immediately after closing of the deal.
To say that Mr. Bright’s politics drifted toward the conservative side is an understatement. Not well known is that Mr. Bright was one of the co-sponsors of a full-page newspaper ad written by local members of the John Birch Society that sharply criticized President John F. Kennedy on the morning of the President’s visit to Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed the President in downtown Dallas later that day. Mr. Bright later stated that, despite the unfortunate assassination, he had no regrets about the ad because it simply reflected his political views.
Subsequently, Mr. Bright was one of the main financial supporters of fellow Texan John Connally‘s Presidential campaign in 1980, which raised and spent $11 million but flamed out after a few primaries. That $11 million expenditure could garner only one binding commitment from a GOP convention delegate. Mr. Connally left politics for good after that fiasco.
A private burial for Mr. Bright will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday, and a memorial service will be conducted at 4 p.m. Thursday at The Chapel of the Cross, 4333 Cole St. in Dallas.