With the wind at his back and a fortune in the bank, young Ray Hunt could have gone anywhere.

Ray Hunt

Wouldn't it be convenient to reinvent himself far from Dallas, where people didn't know the complicated and sometimes painful history of the Hunt family? As a wealthy young man and natural leader, Mr. Hunt could have scaled the social and political rungs of any city.

But even as a 22-year-old SMU grad, that was not Mr. Hunt's style.

"A lot of people feel they have to move to a more exciting city or affiliate with dynamic people, and Ray turns around and creates a dynamic city and becomes a dynamic person," said his sister, Helen LaKelly Hunt, an author and philanthropist who left Dallas as a young adult. "He just looks at what is around him and transforms what is right in his orbit."

Over four decades, Mr. Hunt has helped remake Dallas from an estranged American outpost to a cosmopolitan city at the crossroads of commercial and political life. His low-key personality and insistence on privacy have sometimes masked his impact on the city where his father, the eccentric oil mogul H.L. Hunt, built an empire but remained detached from civic life.

Mr. Hunt's national reputation has swelled in the past three months, owing mostly to his decision to go to Iraq in search of oil. Hunt Oil Co.'s contract raised questions about Mr. Hunt's close relationship with President Bush and prompted allegations that he stands to profit from the spoils of war.

But talk to Mr. Hunt's friends and advisers, and a less sinister portrait emerges of the blue-eyed Texan who has been called a Bush crony. Most of Mr. Hunt's free time has been spent raising a family and shaping institutions that define Dallas, not working to elect Republican politicians.

In addition to serving on one of Mr. Bush's intelligence committees, Mr. Hunt has recruited a new, widely praised president to the Dallas Federal Reserve and led negotiations to secure hundreds of millions of new dollars for Dallas County hospitals. He also has pushed to build Mr. Bush's presidential library at SMU, where some leaders think the institute would boost the university's profile despite Mr. Bush's polarizing legacy.

"He does not take on a lot of projects, but a few projects, and sees them to success," said Carl Sewell, a Dallas car dealer and civic leader who has known Mr. Hunt since high school.

As a businessman, Mr. Hunt's motives are foremost financial. His earliest involvement in health care was intended to make Dallas into a medical referral center, hoping to strengthen a health care industry that was losing ground to Houston.

But Mr. Hunt also speaks about a responsibility to help the uninsured, friends and associates said.

"Ray is about Dallas being strong," said Margaret Jordan, a longtime health care executive whom Mr. Hunt recruited to Dallas. "He's a dyed-in-the-wool Dallasite to the hilt."

That feeling has prompted Mr. Hunt to find talented problem-solvers, hoping to recruit them to Dallas or get them more involved in the community. Some of them have worked for Mr. Hunt, fostering a sort of constellation of business and civic stars who have multiplied his impact on Dallas and North Texas.

Richard Fisher, an Oxford-educated investment banker, said Mr. Hunt was one of the first to welcome him after he married a Dallas woman in 1973. Later, when Mr. Fisher was working in Washington, Mr. Hunt lured him back to become president of Dallas' Federal Reserve Bank.

"This city is not afraid of competition," Mr. Fisher said. "I see Ray as a personality that symbolizes that. There are others, but Ray is the grand kahuna."

Few would have predicted Mr. Hunt's rise to the top of Dallas' social pyramid.

Ray Hunt was the youngest son of H.L. Hunt, a wildcatter who was once the world's richest man. H.L. Hunt had three families by three women; six sons were older than Ray Hunt.

H.L. Hunt was a peculiar mix of intuition and intellect, with a gift for sizing people up. He lacked a formal education and made his first living playing cards. His fortune came from oil bonanzas in East Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.

For the most part, Ray did not grow up around his father. H.L. Hunt met and wooed Ray's mother, 28 years his junior, in Shreveport, La., in the early 1940s. When Ruth Ray became pregnant, the married oilman sent her north, to New York City.

Ray Hunt was born there on April 6, 1943. His mother soon moved to Dallas.

While H.L. Hunt continued to live in a White Rock Lake mansion with his first wife, his new, secret family lived in a house in Lakewood. The children were given the last name Wright.

"I don't think Dad went the extra mile for Ray," Helen LaKelly Hunt said. "Ray's qualities were very quiet, and I'm not aware that Dad noticed them until he [Ray] became a young adult."

H.L. Hunt didn't become a household presence in Ray's life until his teenage years. After his father's first wife died in 1955, H.L. Hunt agreed to marry Ruth Ray, at his youngest son's urging, according to Texas Rich, a biography of the Hunt family.

"You will marry my mother," Ray said, according to the book. "She is a good, religious person, and you will marry her."

For some of the children, it was a complicated reunion. In her recent memoir, Swanee Hunt, one of Ray's sisters, wrote that H.L. Hunt could be distant and continued to have affairs with other women.

But the youngest son did not seem troubled. Ray appeared to embody a saying on a plaque that his mother hung in the kitchen: "Bloom where you are planted."

Mr. Hunt, who agreed to a brief interview for this story, has spoken only in glowing terms about his father. In 1999, he called his father " 'exhibit A' as someone who accomplishes enormous things without the training and attributes you would expect."

"I never heard him say one thing that was [about] disappointment or frustration," Helen LaKelly Hunt said. "He's just a problem-solver."

Ray Hunt didn't evince any disappointment when his father, an anti-communist zealot, forbade him to go to Stanford. Instead, Ray Hunt agreed in 1961 to enroll at Southern Methodist University, where at least he'd be close to home.

On campus, Mr. Hunt was quiet yet affable, becoming president of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.

Close to his mother and her family, Mr. Hunt went out of his way to visit his maternal grandmother during the winter break. While most students hung out with friends, Mr. Hunt drove to Idabel, Okla., to put up his grandmother's Christmas tree.

"He was a very straight-arrow kind of guy, yet he was liked and nobody made fun of him for it," said W. Clark Hendley, a professor at Saint Joseph College in Connecticut who was a classmate of Mr. Hunt at St. Mark's School of Texas and SMU. "His values were set."

Mr. Hunt's SMU connections would last a lifetime. There, he met his wife, Nancy Ann Hunter, the daughter of a respected federal judge from Kansas City; Richard B. Johnson, an economics professor who nurtured Mr. Hunt's talent; and John R. "Johnny" Johnson, Dr. Johnson's son and a hard-charging intellect who became Mr. Hunt's closest friend and attorney.

Mr. Hunt went to work for his father after graduation in 1965. He remained close to the young men he met at SMU. They gathered at dinners, often at the Dallas Petroleum Club, with Dr. Johnson leading a discussion about economics and world events.

To stress the nonprofessional nature of the group, the gang picked the first word in the dictionary – aardvark – for its name. The odd name insured "we couldn't put it on our résumé," said Walt Humann, a longtime friend and business associate of Mr. Hunt.

He also got involved in Republican politics, volunteering for a Republican's campaign for Congress in 1966. Jim Collins, a Dallas business leader and an SMU trustee, lost that year but won election to Congress in 1968.

At Richard Nixon's inauguration the following year, Mr. Hunt had a chance meeting with George H.W. Bush, a hero to many Texas Republicans. Walking through the snow one night, a car stopped and offered Mr. Hunt and his wife a ride. Inside was Mr. Bush, then a representative in Congress, and Barbara Bush.

"They got into the car without knowing who they were," said Jim Oberwetter, who joined Hunt Oil in 1974, after working for Mr. Bush in Congress. "Right away they become friends – one from Houston and one from Dallas."

Republicans were still outsiders in Texas, with Democrats dominating Austin and sending most of the politicians to Washington.

"We were pretty lonely, but we were on a cause and a mission to save America and build a better country," said Steve Bartlett, a former Dallas mayor who worked on Mr. Collins' campaigns with Mr. Hunt.

Mr. Hunt's mettle for problem solving was tested with his first major deal in Dallas. In addition to working at Hunt Oil, Mr. Hunt started a real-estate business, having started buying property while still at SMU.

Among his acreage was an old, neglected rail yard on the southwestern edge of downtown. To realize his vision of building a hotel there, Mr. Hunt courted city officials to participate in the deal.

The city, desperate for new development in downtown, agreed to spend $38 million on streets and other infrastructure to develop the area. Officials also handed over air rights and a long-term lease at Union Station. In exchange, Mr. Hunt donated property to the city that became the site of Reunion Arena.

The deal was a first for Dallas – a partnership between big business and City Hall – and for Mr. Hunt, who was in his early 30s and not widely known.

"Certainly this was a major undertaking on his part and the first time that he would really be visible in the community," said John Scovell, who joined Mr. Hunt in 1972 to develop the project. "It had a lot of pressure from that perspective."

Johnny Johnson worked on the project, handling negotiations with city attorneys. So did a young law partner, Richard Massman, who later joined Mr. Hunt as his general counsel.

To Hunt Oil, which Mr. Hunt took over after his father's death in 1974, he recruited Mr. Humann, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. Mr. Humann, a native Texan who had worked in Lyndon B. Johnson's White House, also had a law degree from SMU.

"I was convinced that Ray Hunt was the right person to be associated with, and the [family] background and past was irrelevant to me," Mr. Humann said.

The Hunt cabinet that would dominate Dallas was coming together. The youngest of them was Mr. Scovell, who was only in his mid-20s.

The group even had a political operator, Mr. Oberwetter, who served as vice president of government affairs and advised Mr. Bartlett's successful 1977 City Council campaign against an establishment candidate.

"There are no average-type people anywhere near Ray," said Wally Swanson, Mr. Johnson's former law partner. "I don't think anybody who has gone to work for Ray has even been divorced."

But Mr. Hunt didn't dominate the cabinet. Mr. Hunt gave his lieutenants room to maneuver – once telling Mr. Scovell that he didn't need to read a construction contract for the hotel that Mr. Scovell had negotiated. "That is why you see loyalty to Ray Hunt – because he returns it," Mr. Scovell said.

The Hyatt Regency opened in 1978, with a massive fireworks display that stopped traffic on Dallas' streets. Reunion Tower, the lollipop-shaped structure next to the Hyatt, instantly redefined Dallas' skyline.

But the residences and shops that Mr. Hunt envisioned around the hotel never followed. As Dallas' march toward the suburban north became inevitable, Mr. Hunt scaled back.

The sports teams later abandoned Reunion, and Mr. Hunt didn't develop air rights he obtained above a city parking garage.

Those shortcomings provided fodder for Mr. Hunt's critics, who have argued since then that Mr. Hunt hasn't done enough for Dallas.

Almost three decades later, sore feelings over the Hyatt deal re-emerged, as the City Council debated a $6.3 million tax break for Hunt Oil's new headquarters. Laura Miller, then Dallas' mayor and a longtime critic of Mr. Hunt, accused the company of needlessly picking the city's pockets.

Mr. Hunt's lieutenants said Hunt Oil would relocate to another city, perhaps Irving, if the company did not get the same tax break granted to other corporations in downtown Dallas.

"I believe you should only go where you are wanted," Mr. Hunt said in an interview. "And if you are not wanted somewhere, you should not stay there."

The City Council approved the deal, while Ms. Miller and council member Mitchell Rasansky voted against it.

Mr. Rasansky argued that Hunt Oil's threat was a ruse. The company applied for a building permit before the council debated the abatement, Mr. Rasansky noted.

Moving the building would have required scrapping several million dollars in architectural fees and other soft costs, said Mr. Rasansky, who has been a real-estate developer and investor.

"They knew they were going to build it here," Mr. Rasansky said. "For them to come to the city's taxpayers and say other things is just to me unforgivable."

Mr. Scovell confirmed the company had a permit – for demolition of an existing structure on the site – before the council vote. The timing looked bad, he acknowledged. But Hunt Oil would have gone to Irving or elsewhere if Dallas' council had rejected its request, he said.

To Mr. Hunt's friends, the dispute underscored the occasional liability of being a Hunt. To others, it underlined a contradiction – of the city's leading resident hectoring elected officials over a sum that amounted to a sliver of its total costs.

"As the leading figure, does he say, 'I have plenty of money. I can build this myself'?" said Cal Jillson, an SMU professor who has studied Dallas' politics. "He doesn't say that. He says, 'I want the same deal that everybody else got,' which is a little at odds with being the city's leading citizen."

Yet Mr. Hunt's friends insist there is no contradiction.

"The world thinks Ray Hunt can pay more," Mr. Scovell said. "So we always have to watch our taxes and make sure we are being treated the same."

Hunt Oil employees began occupying their new headquarters last month. Like almost everything else Mr. Hunt has built, the 14-story building doesn't have his name on it. Mr. Hunt often says he doesn't believe in monuments.

Some people close to Mr. Hunt think he always intended to build in Dallas. His family has a nearly 70-year presence in the city, and leaving would have taken him away from the place he committed innumerable hours to improving.

"I really didn't see him ever close to that," said Stan Copeland, a Methodist pastor who moved to Dallas 10 years ago after a passionate pitch from Mr. Hunt. "They are really entrenched here, as far as their commitment to the city. There is no question they love Dallas and love making Dallas better."

Mr. Hunt stepped into that role 25 years ago. The conservative city was changing, and it needed new leadership.

Texas' economic bust in the late 1980s, along with the mergers and failures that claimed the city's banks, meant fewer local corporations to contribute money to worthy causes and fewer business leaders to grapple with the city's problems.

Into the void stepped Ray Hunt and some of his top lieutenants, including Mr. Scovell, Mr. Humann and Mr. Oberwetter.

"He came along at a time in which there was a real turnover in the corporate leadership of the city," said Royce Hanson, a former professor at the University of Texas at Dallas whose book, Civic Culture and Urban Change: Governing Dallas, was published in 2003. "There was a power vacuum."

Paul M. Bass, a Dallas businessman and philanthropist, said Mr. Hunt's "time had come."

"Ray came in during the breach," Mr. Bass said. "He's the guy at the dike, and he stuck his finger in the hole. That's Ray to me."

While Mr. Humann focused on transportation, Mr. Hunt got involved with health care and SMU. After a pay-to-play athletics scandal tarnished SMU's reputation, Mr. Hunt became chairman of its board of trustees and recruited a new president, Ken Pye, who restored integrity to the school.

"There were just a handful of us standing there wringing our hands, and he just seemed willing to do it," said Ruth Altshuler, a longtime SMU trustee.

The episode established Mr. Hunt as a go-to university leader. It also displayed his unique exercise of power.

Unlike some of the business leaders before him, Mr. Hunt's leadership style was democratic and inclusive. He does not wield singular or absolute power like the businessmen who controlled Dallas for much of the 20th century.

"If Ray were who he is today 50 years ago, he would very much fit that old ... mold and be a kingmaker – when a handful of people around a lunch table could probably control the results at City Hall," said Bob Estrada, a Dallas businessman who served in former President Bush's administration.

Now "you have to be more of a consensus builder, to spot talent and magnify it and have it stand out," he said.

In 1989, Mr. Hunt took the reins of a medical group formed by the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce. The group, Dallas Medical Resource, wanted Dallas to catch up with Houston's growing role as a center of specialized medicine.

Mr. Hunt and others hoped Dallas' hospitals would develop distinct "centers of excellence" that patients would seek out. The effort collapsed with the rise of managed care, which gave insurance companies the upper hand in determining where patients would be treated.

But the effort had a lasting impact on health care in North Texas.

"It brought to the table fiercely competitive hospitals around an issue that resonated and not a single one could deal with," said Ms. Jordan, who served as president and CEO of Dallas Medical Resource.

The group revived itself four years ago, after management and budgetary problems surfaced at Parkland Memorial Hospital.

Hospital administrators argued Parkland wasn't getting enough money to treat the indigent and uninsured who depended on the county hospital. So Mr. Hunt led an effort to secure more federal Medicaid dollars. When talks broke down, Mr. Hunt told the administrators and lawyers that he would make sure Dallas knew who broke up the party, Ms. Jordan said.

"He says, 'I am going to isolate who caused this to happen, and then you may not have the continuing support of the business community,' " Ms. Jordan said. "It's not a threat. He has the view that it's their responsibility to do all they can for the uninsured in this community."

That is a side to Mr. Hunt that most people do not see, said Don R. Benton, Mr. Hunt's pastor for some 20 years. Because Mr. Hunt has insisted on a private life for his family, which includes five children, even people in his hometown don't know how he operates, Mr. Benton and others said.

Since Mr. Hunt can't get to know all of his 2,300 employees, he hired Mr. Benton to reach out on his behalf. Mr. Benton counsels Hunt employees who are dealing with health problems or other troubles.

"I've had the opportunity to marry and bury and counsel, things that Ray wanted [to do] within the company," Mr. Benton said.

Mr. Hunt has also made an impact on Dallas with his money. No single source has catalogued his philanthropy, but according to public records and newspaper accounts, Mr. Hunt and his wife have donated at least $3.2 million to causes that include shelters for abused women and homeless people, suicide hotlines and programs to help women leave sexually oriented businesses.

Mr. Hunt declines to talk about his giving, a decision that sometimes flummoxes his friends and colleagues.

"I wish at times that Ray would be more open with what he does," Mr. Scovell said.

Much of Mr. Hunt's philanthropy has benefited SMU. In 1993, he pledged $25 million to underwrite scholarships for young leaders. He also gathered the funding to underwrite a center for economic studies in Dr. Johnson's name, said Jack Knox, an oilman who has known Mr. Hunt since their days together at SMU.

Mr. Hunt's latest undertaking at SMU has been courting President Bush's library. He rarely speaks about it and declines to talk about his relationship with Mr. Bush. Mr. Hunt served as Mr. Bush's Texas finance chairman in 2000, and Mr. Bush later appointed him to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a position that affords a security clearance and access to classified intelligence.

Mr. Hunt donated $35 million to SMU so the university could buy a shopping center that could be used for the library. He did not publicize the donation. He also met with Mr. Bush at least twice – at the White House and in Crawford – to sell him on SMU as a location, according to a deposition that Mr. Hunt gave in a lawsuit connected to the library.

Mr. Hunt said his donation wasn't tied to the library and insisted the university could use the property for other purposes, such as student housing or intramural fields.

"If the library was nowhere involved in SMU's future, I would have still made the same contribution to SMU to buy that land," Mr. Hunt said.

Yet many supporters think the project would enhance the university's profile and boost fundraising. In that respect, the project fits Mr. Hunt's lifelong effort to improve the university.

"It will be one of the most studied presidencies in our history, and SMU will attract intellectuals from all over the world to study the Bush presidency," said Mr. Sewell, who now serves as chairman of SMU's board of trustees.

Mr. Knox said the library's impact would spill over to Dallas.

"Regardless of what you think about the [Bush] legacy, and there are many issues with that, having a presidential library will certainly be an enhancement to the university in the centuries to come," Mr. Knox said, "and, consequently, to the city."

Mr. Hunt's footprint in Dallas won't stop with SMU.

JPI, a developer that survived the late-1980s real-estate crash with an investment from Mr. Hunt, is poised to develop a mixed-use project in a redeveloped Trinity River corridor. The project, which would include apartments and restaurants, would transform a chuck-holed stretch of road known for liquor stores, fast-food joints and bail bond companies.

Hunt Realty Investments has since sold its interest in JPI, whose enthusiasm to build in a long-dormant area – aided by city investment – recalls Mr. Hunt's own history with the Hyatt Regency.

Woodbine Development Corp., Mr. Hunt's real-estate company with Mr. Scovell, may be working with the city again. Woodbine wants to build a new, city-owned hotel near the Dallas Convention Center. Plans were scuttled earlier this year after the city and Woodbine couldn't agree on financial terms.

But the city is close to issuing a new advertisement for hotel developers. Although a surface parking lot near the convention center is considered a likely site, a cheaper site would be above the parking garage where Woodbine owns air rights.

Without having developed its rights, Woodbine could sell or trade them back to the city.

"It's almost déjà vu," Mr. Scovell said. "We have something the city needs, and we'd certainly look at what other assets the city has. Is there a land exchange?"

With Ms. Miller gone from the mayor's office, the most prominent critic of such a deal is gone. Dallas' new mayor, Tom Leppert, a former construction executive, is friendly with Mr. Humann and Mr. Scovell and wants to see the hotel built.

"He's the champion for the convention center hotel, whereas we never had the leadership of the city" for it, Mr. Scovell said.

Mr. Hunt's reach is also visible in the city's growing relationships with the world beyond Dallas. Mr. Hunt has been a financial backer of the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth, a group that hosts foreign leaders and trains local teachers to instruct about international affairs. Two of Mr. Hunt's vice presidents, Tom Meurer and Mr. Oberwetter, have been directors of the group.

Four years ago, Mr. Hunt paid for 100 students from public and private schools to attend a lecture by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, said James Falk, the council's president. "Ray really wants to open up the city and give people the chance to be exposed to different cultures, and make Dallas a more dynamic city," Mr. Falk said.

One institution helping to pursue that goal is the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, an institution whose board Mr. Hunt chaired from 2003 to 2006. The bank's current president, Richard Fisher, is a former globe-trotting investment banker who has pushed the bank's researchers to study the role of globalization in debates about monetary policy and labor markets.

When Mr. Hunt first asked him to consider becoming president of the Dallas Fed, Mr. Fisher was vice chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a consulting firm in Washington whose chairman was former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

It was a big step to come back to Dallas, a town that he once considered "a pretty plain-Jane city."

"Now you look at the skyline and all the building cranes and it's like Shanghai," Mr. Fisher said. "The dynamism of this city, the beauty from an architectural spirit, and the entrepreneurial spirit, Ray is a vital part of that fabric."

Born: April 6, 1943, New York, N.Y.

Education: St. Mark's School of Texas, 1961; bachelor's degree, Southern Methodist University, 1965

Career: Chairman, president and chief executive, Hunt Consolidated Inc., a holding company that owns Hunt Oil Co., Hunt Realty Investments Inc., Hunt Refining Co., Hunt Power, Hunt Private Equity Group, Hunt Mexico, and Hoodoo Land and Cattle Co. Other associated companies include Woodbine Development Corp.

Family: Married, five children. One son, Hunter Hunt, is senior vice president of Hunt Oil and chairman and president of Sharyland Utilities, a company producing power on the Texas-Mexico border.