A Dallas kid whose dad put the family name on a hotel two years before he was born ended up owning a pro football team and sitting among the AFL owners in the 1966 merger with the NFL. That is Barron Hilton, born in Dallas on October 23, 1927, the hotelier who ran Hilton Hotels Corporation for 30 years. Texas can claim him at birth, and the business he inherited started here.
A hotel family with Texas roots
Conrad Hilton, Barron's father, got into the hotel trade in Cisco, Texas. Years later came the Dallas Hilton, which the company describes as the first hotel formally named a Hilton. It opened in 1925. Barron was born in Dallas in 1927, so he came into the thing before it was an empire.
His parents were Conrad Hilton and Mary Adelaide Barron, and the family didn't stay put in Texas. Barron's career played out mostly in California, and his home at the end was in Los Angeles. I'd argue that makes him a Texan by birth and by business inheritance more than by address, and that's worth saying plainly.
He served in the U.S. Navy in World War II. He joined Hilton Hotels in 1954 as a vice president. In 1966 he succeeded his father as president and chief executive, and he held that job for 30 years. When the Blackstone Group bought the company in 2007, the price was $26 billion including debt.
The football man
Here's the part sports fans know. On August 14, 1959, Hilton secured a Los Angeles franchise in the brand new American Football League. That team became the Chargers. The crowds in Los Angeles were thin, so in 1961 he moved the club about 120 miles south to San Diego. The Chargers won the AFL title in 1963, beating Boston 51 to 10.
Hilton sold the team in 1966 to a group led by Gene Klein for $10 million, reported as a record price for a pro football franchise at the time. During his six years of ownership, the team won five divisional titles and one AFL championship.
His bigger football legacy is off the field. He was one of the AFL owners in the 1966 merger with the NFL, the deal that led to the Super Bowl, and the Hilton Foundation credits him with helping forge it. Current Chargers owner Dean Spanos said after Hilton died that the modern NFL wouldn't be what it is without his vision. Some owners just write checks.
Planes, then a very large gift
Hilton loved to fly. He hosted a glider competition that carried his name through 2009, and he received the FAI Gold Air Medal in 2009.
The money story is the one that lasts. In 2007 he announced he would leave 97 percent of his wealth to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
Barron Hilton died at his Los Angeles home on September 19, 2019, at 91. His wife, Marilyn Hawley Hilton, had died in 2004. They had eight children.
What strikes me is how much of modern American life runs through one Dallas birth certificate: the hotel chain, the Chargers, a foundation that still gives money away. Does a Texan have to stay in Texas to count? Tell us where you land.
Photo: Deveram, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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