FIGURE 1. Hayden Ahmanson was almost eight years older than his brother Howard. After Hayden left home to attend high school at the Kemper Military Academy and then enrolled at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Howard grew up as the only child in the house. Nevertheless, the brothers remained close and were deeply involved in National American Fire Insurance throughout their adult lives. (Photographer unknown. The Ahmanson Foundation Collection.)

FIGURE 2. Aimee, Florence, William, Hayden, and Howard Ahmanson (left to right) in Omaha. With Will's death in 1925, Howard moved himself and his mother to Los Angeles, where he finished college at the University of Southern California and launched his own insurance agency. Hayden and his wife, Aimee, remained in Omaha, and Hayden worked as an executive with the insurance company his father had founded in 1919. (Photographer unknown. The Ahmanson Foundation Collection.)

FIGURE 3. Omaha insurance executive William H. Ahmanson doted on his son Howard. After dinner, even when Howard was still in elementary school, father and son would discuss business and finance “as if I had the maturity and judgment of a man of 50,” Howard recalled. When Will died suddenly in 1925, Howard was devastated. In part, his subsequent entrepreneurial drive was rooted in his desire to realize his father's ambitions. (Photographer unknown. The Ahmanson Foundation Collection.)

FIGURE 4. Howard Ahmanson launched his own insurance agency in August 1926 while he was still a student at the University of Southern California and just twenty years old. He was a persistent salesman and a shrewd judge of risk. Underwriters were astounded by the low loss rate on his fire insurance policies. With low losses, he earned high commissions and profits. During the worst years of the Depression, he made his first million dollars. (Photographer unknown. The Collection of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.)

FIGURE 5. Glamorous and spirited, Dorothy “Dottie” Johnston Grannis worked as a social secretary for Paramount producer David O. Selznick and was a student at the University of California, Southern Branch (UCLA) in the late 1920s. She and Howard Ahmanson dated for more than six years before they were married in 1933. (Photographer unknown. The Collection of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.)

FIGURE 6. Howard Ahmanson posed with the rest of his naval class at Quonset, Rhode Island, in 1943 (second row, second from the end on the right). They ranged from “excited kids to old time blasé naval officers.” He was the “worst driller in the place,” he wrote his wife, Dorothy. Though he was “lousy” at sports, he enjoyed the eight weeks of camaraderie. (Photographer unknown. The Collection of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.)

FIGURE 7. Still eligible for the draft at the age of thirty-seven in 1943, Howard Ahmanson applied for a commission in the U.S. Navy. During the war, from his “foxhole at the Shoreham” Hotel in Washington, D.C., he was a chief expediter in the Aircraft Products Division at the Pentagon. His year in Washington deepened his political and business contacts and helped shape his perspective on the postwar economy. (Photo by John Engstead. The Collection of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.)

FIGURE 8. Although his business empire was largely confined to Southern California, Howard Ahmanson traveled widely. Following a bout of ill health in 1951, he and his wife, Dorothy, took nephew Robert Ahmanson on a two-month trip to North Africa, Israel, and Europe. (Photographer unknown. The Collection of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.)

FIGURE 9. Always the salesman, Howard Ahmanson sent stacks of postcards to his savings and loan customers when he traveled abroad. When copies of this image of Dorothy, Robert, and Howard Ahmanson in France in 1951 arrived in Southern California mailboxes, Los Angeles Times society columnist James Copp noted the car and Dottie's leopard fur coat. (Photographer unknown. The Collection of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.)

FIGURE 10. Howard Ahmanson and Goodwin Knight became friends in the mid-1930s when they both had offices in the same building in downtown Los Angeles. After Knight succeeded Earl Warren as governor of California in 1953, Ahmanson agreed to serve as the finance chairman of Knight's gubernatorial campaign. (Photographer unknown. The Collection of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.)

FIGURE 11. Although they maintained a cordial relationship, Ahmanson was the victim of Richard Nixon's efforts to control the California Republican Party in 1954. After Goodwin Knight picked Ahmanson to serve as vice chairman of the party, Nixon's allies tried to block Ahmanson's election. Knight and Ahmanson prevailed, but the incident exacerbated growing tensions within the party. (Gift of the Rothschild Family; photograph by Otto Rothschild. UCLA Special Collections Library.)

FIGURE 12. In 1950, Howard and Dorothy Ahmanson bought the Lloyd Wright-designed home and property once owned by violinist Jascha Heifetz and his wife, actress Florence Vidor, on Harbor Island. With the help of Millard Sheets and another architect, the Ahmansons added a large den and master bedroom, built a swimming pool with a bridge over it that led to the front door, and constructed a two-story guest house on an adjoining lot. From this retreat, the family regularly set sail on the Sirius on weekends. (Photographer unknown. The Ahmanson Foundation Collection.)

FIGURE 13. Competitive by nature, Howard and Dorothy Ahmanson began racing sailboats with their nephews, William and Robert, soon after the end of the war. By the late 1950s, the couple spent most weekends with their son, Howard junior, on the boat or in their second home on Harbor Island in Newport Beach. (Photographer unknown. The Collection of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.)

FIGURE 14. Evelyn Barty (right) managed the details of Howard Ahmanson's life for more than twenty-five years. A musician and singer, she had performed with her sister Dolores and brother Billy in the 1930s. While her brother went on to be a Hollywood star, Evelyn landed a job at H. F. Ahmanson & Co. She frequently accompanied the Ahmansons on their trips abroad and often performed with Howard during the voyage across the ocean. (Photographer unknown. Collection of Dolores Morse.)

FIGURE 15. After Home Savings & Loan surpassed all rivals in 1953, Ahmanson ran a series of ads associating the company with other American icons: Mt. Whitney, Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the U.S.S. Midway aircraft carrier, the Los Angeles Coliseum, and the General Sherman giant sequoia—all the “largest in America.” (JPMorgan Chase & Company.)

FIGURE 16. Howard Edgerton, the CEO of California Federal Savings & Loan (CalFed), was a close friend and competitor throughout Ahmanson's career. A pilot, Edgerton added a heliport to the top of the CalFed headquarters so he could commute by helicopter. (Photographer unknown. Courtesy of Beverly Adair.)

FIGURE 17. Overweight and bookish as a girl, Caroline Leonetti transformed her life through self-discipline and the study of charm and fashion. After winning a beauty contest at the 1939 World's Fair, she founded her own school and modeling agency in San Francisco. A single mother, she became a regular on Art Linkletter's radio program. When Linkletter moved to television and Los Angeles, Leonetti moved as well. Howard Ahmanson met her at a wedding shortly after he separated from his wife Dorothy. (Photographer unknown. Collection of Margo Leonetti O'Connell.)

FIGURE 18. Interpersonal tensions between Howard Ahmanson, Norton Simon, and Richard Brown were reflected in the inscription carved in stone in the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Simon and Brown were given credit for conceiving the museum. Ahmanson's lead gift provided the impetus for the project. Ahmanson's close ties to members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, including Ernest E. Debs (pictured here with Caroline Leonetti Ahmanson to his right and his wife, Lorene, to his left), played a key role in winning political support for the project. (Photographer unknown. Collection of Margo Leonetti O'Connell.)

FIGURE 19. Howard Ahmanson's nephews, William (left) and Robert (right), left Omaha as teens during the war. Both graduated from UCLA and went to work for their prosperous uncle. After Howard's death, William became CEO of H. F. Ahmanson & Co. and chairman of Home Savings & Loan. Robert became the president of the Ahmanson Foundation. (Photographer unknown. Collection of Margo Leonetti O'Connell.)

FIGURE 20. Howard Ahmanson and Caroline Leonetti were married in a simple ceremony at Robert and Kathleen Ahmanson's home on January 14, 1965. He was fifty-eight years old. She was forty-six. (Photographer unknown. Collection of Margo Leonetti O'Connell.)

FIGURE 21. University of Southern California president Norman Topping was a friend, neighbor, and sailing partner. Topping encouraged Ahmanson to join the university's board of trustees in 1961. The following year Ahmanson gave $1 million to help fund the development of a biosciences research center on campus. Designed by William Pereira, the center opened in April 1964. (SC Photo. Doheny Memorial Library. University of Southern California, on behalf of the USC Archives.)

FIGURE 22. Caroline Leonetti Ahmanson and architect William Pereira. Although one critic called him “Hollywood's idea of an architect,” Pereira was one of the most prolific and influential architects in Southern California in the mid-1960s. With his space-age designs, he was the favorite of the region's aerospace industry. His master plans included the University of California campuses at Santa Barbara and Irvine. A close friend and business associate of Howard Ahmanson from the mid-1950s, Pereira developed plans for many of Home Savings & Loan's developments in the 1960s. (Photographer unknown. Collection of Margo Leonetti O'Connell.)

FIGURE 23. Howard Ahmanson had hoped that his son, Howard Fieldstad Ahmanson Jr., nicknamed “Steady” when he was young, would grow up to inherit his father's financial empire. Often cared for by his aunt Aimee (far right) when his parents were traveling, Howard junior coped with undiagnosed Tourette's syndrome. His parents enrolled him at Black-Foxe Military Institute, hoping it would provide structure. Howard junior loved the uniform and wore it constantly. (Photo by Irving L. Antler. The Collection of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson.)

FIGURE 24. When he announced plans to build the Ahmanson Center in October 1967, Howard Ahmanson envisioned a massive three-building office and commercial complex reminiscent of the Rockefeller Center in New York. Architect Edward Durrell Stone, designer of the Kennedy Center in Washington, planned a plaza in the tradition of the great cities of Europe that would serve as a public gathering place. Ahmanson died before the project broke ground. (Photographer unknown. Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.)