known as the Suite 8F Group, named for the apartment number at the Lamar Hotel maintained by George and Herman Brown. Jones owned the hotel and resided in the building's penthouse, upstairs from the Browns' suite. The principal members of this group were James Abercrombie, the Brown brothers, Judge James Elkins, Oveta Culp Hobby, William P. Hobby, Robert E. Smith, and Gus Wortham. Historian Joseph Pratt characterized Jones as "the godfather" of the group. The Suite 8F Group began their activities after World War II. Philanthropy and non-profits Prior to 1937, Jesse and Mary Jones had given about $1 million to charitable causes. In 1937, they established the Houston Endowment to organize their philanthropic endeavors. Their Commerce Company was already established as a conglomeration of most of the family business interests. They granted about a third of the company's shares to the Houston Endowment, while appointing Milton Backlund, Fred Heyne, and W. W. Moore as the first trustees. During the first seven years, Houston Endowment focused its donations on education. From 1932, Jones had not cashed any paychecks he earned through his various federal government positions through 1945. In 1946, he signed them all over to the Houston Endowment. At the same time Jones and his wife worked through the Houston Endowment to give this money away, much of it with a focus on education. Through the Houston Endowment, they made a $300,000 grant to the University of Virginia in honor of Woodrow Wilson. They established scholarship funds for the Texas State College for Women, Prairie View A & M University, the University of Tennessee, and Texas A & M University. Later they created an engineering scholarship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology honoring Bill Knudsen and an economics scholarship at Austin College honoring Jesse's brother, John. More ten-year scholarship programs funded students attending Rice University and Texas A & M, and several of the individual recipients were veterans of World War II. Another program supported nursing candidates at the University of Houston. They also made large gifts to the American Red Cross, the Houston Community Chest, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and the United Jewish Appeal. In 1946, Jones joined the Board of Trustees of the Texas Medical Center. In 1956, the Jesse Holman Jones Hospital was built in Springfield, Tennessee to replace the original hospital there. Jones made a gift of $1 million to Rice University to establish