Early Life
A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Culverhouse attended the University of Alabama, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Psi chapter). On the University of Alabama boxing team, he competed together with future governor George Wallace, an experience to which he attributed his confidence in later life. He graduated in 1941. After serving in the Army Air Corps in World War II, he earned a law degree from his alma mater in 1947. He immediately took a job as an assistant state attorney general, serving there for two years. After serving in the Korean War, he became legal counsel for the Internal Revenue Service, where he prosecuted many of the cases resulting from the organized crime investigations of Senator Estes Kefauver. He resigned from the IRS in 1962 after a decade of service, and moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he entered private practice, specializing in tax law. Although he was considered to be one of the nation's top tax lawyers, one whose cases were sometimes cited by the Supreme Court of the United States, his fortune was built on real estate investments. Listed by Forbes Magazine as one of the 250 wealthiest people in the United States, he eventually had investments in 37 companies and was worth over $380 million at his death. He served as a personal representative of President Gerald Ford, bearing the title of U.S. Ambassador, at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. The University of Alabama's Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration is named for him.
Culverhouse's investments included several banks, Provincetown-Boston Airlines, the Palmer Ranch real estate development near Sarasota, Florida, and movie productions including A Chorus Line and The Emerald Forest. He was criticized over a planned extension of Interstate 75 into South Florida, as its route went directly past land owned by numerous powerful investors, including Culverhouse, Governor Bob Graham, State Attorney General Jim Smith, and the Arvida Corporation.
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