In 1947 Slick Airways decided to move its operations to California, Dee did not want to transfer to California because his family ties were now firmly rooted in San Antonio, so at the age of twenty-seven with a wife and two young children Dee resigned his secure position with Slick Airways and founded his first company, Howard Aero, Inc., starting with a small one-room building on the ramp at San Antonio Municipal Airport and shortly thereafter hired his first employee, Ed Swearingen, and later hired Bill Lear, Jr. Howard Aero grew rapidly and became one of the most successful aircraft maintenance and modification companies of the post-World War II era. When Dee celebrated his 40^th birthday in 1960, Howard Aero had over 1000 employees.

Howard Aero’s first major program was to extensively modify and remanufacture the Lockheed Ventura medium bomber into a high performance long range business aircraft that became the Howard Super Ventura. The highly successful Super Ventura was followed by the Howard 250, the Howard 350, and the Howard 500 models. The Howard 500 received an FAA Type Certificate (TC) as an all new pressurized aircraft. The Super Ventura and the Howard 500 were produced on an assembly line in the same manner that new aircraft are manufactured. An impressive number of various other Howard Modified Lockheed Aircraft were produced and flew with an enviable safety record. Not any of the Dee Howard Aircraft was involved in a passenger fatality.

Bill Lear was a contemporary of Dee and although Bill and Dee were competitors, they had great respect for each other and became close friends. In the early 1960’s Dee worked with Bill during the development of the first business jet aircraft which became the Learjet and Dee produced the first full-scale mockup of the Learjet in his hangar in San Antonio. Years later when Bill passed away, as a tribute to Bill, Dee’s personal Learjet was the lead aircraft in a flyover at Bill’s funeral in Reno, Nevada.

When the new business jets were first introduced they were equipped with drag-chutes for emergency stopping. It wasn’t long before business jet thrust reversers went to the top of Dee’s list of important things that needed to be done. The rest is history. The first Dee Howard designed and produced thrust reverser for the GE CJ-610 jet engine was highly successful and advanced the state of the art in thrust reverser function and reliability. With the introduction of the fan-jet engines for business aviation, The Dee Howard Co. entered into a joint venture with a French engineer, Etienne Fage, to develop cold flow thrust reversers for high bypass fan jet engines. Etienne was one of the original development engineers for the supersonic Concorde. The Dee Howard/Fage thrust reversers were manufactured by The Dee Howard Co. and soon became standard equipment on several new business jets that were manufactured in the USA, Great Britain (Hawker) and France (Dassault).The Dee Howard Co. thrust reverser business was eventually spun off from The Dee Howard Co. and sold to Nordam of Tulsa, Oklahoma whose Nacelle/Thrust Reverser Systems Division still produces them to this day.

In 1988, twenty-four years after its founding in 1964, The Dee Howard Co. had grown to over 1,500 employees, including more than 350 engineers, and occupied more than 54 acres at San Antonio International Airport, including more than 550,000 square feet of buildings including three hangars that could house wide body aircraft such as B747s and DC-10s. In 1988, Dee sold a 40% interest in DHC to the Italian aerospace company, Alenia (a division of Finmeccanica and then known as Aeritalia) to continue to expand the global business opportunities for the company and to secure a major long term commercial aviation employer for his employees and San Antonio after he was no longer involved in day to day management of the company. Between 1988 and 1991 Dee transferred his remaining 60% interest in DHC to Alenia and passed the baton in the aircraft business to others.

But the final chapter in Dee’s storied career had not been written, far from it. After Dee left DHC he founded River City Products, Inc. (RCP) to focus on his other engineering passion, automotive engineering. Specifically, to improve highway safety by making heavy over the road vehicles directionally stable, less fatiguing, and safer to drive. Dee licensed RCP to manufacture and sell the Howard Precision Steer Wheel Control System which is still in service on more than 3,000 heavy over the road buses, trucks and recreational vehicles that have collectively driven hundreds of millions of in-service miles. Due to failing health, Dee retired from RCP in 2006 and passed away on 12 February 2009. As one final tribute to Dee’s engineering genius, the final patent was issued by the US Patent & Trademark office [No.7.806,419] to Durrell U. ” Dee” Howard on 5 October 2010.