FIGURE 5.1 National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC.

      Source: Photo by George Silk. Photo courtesy of HOK.

Landing in Dallas

      Dallas, Texas was not on the minds of the founders when they first considered adding offices. That would soon change with the advent of a major project opportunity. This time, Obata's burgeoning design reputation, more than Hellmuth's clever marketing ability, led to the establishment of another new office. It happened in a mad rush of opportunity and action.

      The twin Texas cities of Dallas and Fort Worth are only 31 miles apart, and both maintained competing airports until 1966. After prodding by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the cities agreed to jointly build and operate a new airport on a large tract of land midway between their two city centers. They recruited Thomas Sullivan, former head of Kennedy Airport in New York, as director of the new airport to be called Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). Acting on the advice of friends in the aviation industry, Sullivan invited Gyo Obata to Dallas for a preliminary interview and was impressed with his ability to listen and absorb ideas for the new airport. A few days later, Sullivan asked Obata for information about HOK and examples of recent work. Sullivan explained that he wanted to brief the airport board—and that the meeting was the next morning!

Frantic, Gerry Gilmore of the marketing department worked all day to assemble the requested material. Then—in a classic move inspired by Hellmuth, his mentor—he flew to Dallas and hand-delivered the package to Sullivan late in the evening. Sullivan looked through it but was not satisfied, and asked Gilmore for more supporting detail. At 1 a.m., Gilmore called King Graf in St. Louis, rousting him from bed. King put on his clothes, drove downtown to the office, and assembled yet more material for Sullivan. Then he arranged for a chartered plane to fly it to Dallas! Gilmore met the plane, rushed to Sullivan's office, and hand-delivered the new material to him just as the board meeting was beginning.

Gilmore waited nervously outside Sullivan's office to learn the outcome. Finally, Sullivan called Gilmore into his office, telephoned Obata, and said, “Obata, I just finished the presentation to the airport board. I'm sitting here with your guy, Gilmore, and I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you.” A big grin spread over his face. “The bad news is that I sold you to the board this morning, and now you're going to have to design this damned thing.”³

      HOK was required to establish a Dallas project office as a condition of the contract. As with San Francisco, the founders believed the project office was an opportunity for a permanent HOK office. Maybe it was because King Graf had performed so admirably, half-asleep, in the middle of the night, to help land the DFW Airport job, that Hellmuth asked him to relocate from St. Louis to Dallas and look for more commissions. King would remain in Dallas for a decade and was successful in winning many more contracts, establishing Dallas as a major HOK office.

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport began operations in 1973, and today serves over 60 million passengers annually, with five terminals and 165 gates. In 2017, Airports Council International named DFW the best large airport in North America for passenger satisfaction.