Hulman's first project was developing a 10-year plan for an ad campaign that would take Clabber Girl's top product, baking powder, to national prominence.

Salesmen traveled around the country posting billboards along the roadside and going door-to-door inviting women to try Clabber Girl, which successfully boosted product sales.

Following Shaw's death in a plane crash on October 30, 1954, Hulman stepped into his soon-to-be-familiar role as the "face" of the Speedway.

Into the 1970s, despite the fact he'd given the command so many times before, he would always practice it extensively beforehand, and on race day, he would invariably pull a card containing the famous words: "Gentlemen, start your engines!"

Their sole grandson, Anton Hulman "Tony" George, would carry on the family's racing and business traditions.

The Hulmans were well known in Indiana for their philanthropy and dedication to higher education; Terre Haute's Rose Polytechnic Institute received gifts of millions of dollars over the years.

The Hulmans' generosity led the board of Rose Polytechnic to rename the school Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in the couple's honor in 1971.

Mari Hulman George established a Center for Equine Studies at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, west of Terre Haute.

On the night of October 27, 1977, Hulman died of heart failure caused by a ruptured aortic aneurysm[3] on the operating table in St. Vincent's Hospital in Indianapolis.

[6] Hulman went on a buying spree beginning in the 1930s, purchasing a string of Coca-Cola bottling plants across Indiana (which were later consolidated to Indianapolis), utility companies, newspapers, radio and television stations including Terre Haute's WTHI, WTHI-FM and WTHI-TV, and a great deal of real estate.

In recent years, however, as the family has concentrated primarily on the Speedway and racing-related businesses, they have slowly begun to divest themselves of some of Hulman's real estate holdings and "non-core" businesses, such as Wabash Valley Broadcasting, their radio and television holding company, which was sold to Emmis Communications in 1997.

The company (Wabash Valley Broadcasting) started radio station WTHI-AM, which went on air January 1948 as an ABC affiliate.