Barron Hilton

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Former Los Angeles Chargers owner Barron Hilton (October 23, 1927–September 19, 2019), business magnate and philanthropist, circa 1980s. 

© Ralph Dominguez—MediaPunch Inc/Alamy

Barron Hilton (born October 23, 1927, Dallas; died September 19, 2019, Los Angeles) was an American businessman who led the Hilton family hotel empire and helped found the American Football League. He was also the grandfather of socialite Paris Hilton.

William Barron Hilton (known as Barron) was born in Dallas, the middle child of three sons, to Conrad Nicholson Hilton and Mary Adelaide (née Barron) Hilton. His father started the Hilton hotel empire in 1919. When Barron was eight years old, his parents divorced. He recalled in a 1981 interview with People magazine that he had “a misspent youth,” including getting “kicked out of four or five schools.”

When Barron was in his early teens, he wrote a letter while away at school asking his father to raise his allowance to $5 a week, according to Jerry Oppenheimer’s 2006 book House of Hilton. He ended the letter, “Sorry this is all business. Your loving son, Barron Hilton.” As a teen, he parked cars for hotel guests at the Town House in Los Angeles, and when he was 17, he joined the military, working as a U.S. Navy photographer at Pearl Harbor during World War II.

When he was 19, Hilton turned down a $150-a-week offer from his father to work his way up the Hilton hotel chain and instead acquired a citrus distribution company in Southern California. He later said he wanted to make it on his own—and he did, running the business successfully for about five years. Nevertheless, he joined the family business in the early 1950s and became vice president in 1954.

In 1959, wealthy Texas businessman Lamar Hunt, the son of oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, decided to launch a rival football league after the established National Football League rebuffed his efforts to start a new team in Dallas. Hunt wanted to include a team in Los Angeles for the new American Football League (AFL), and his friend, former tennis star Gene Mako, suggested Hilton, who became the team’s owner. Hilton held a contest to name the team, and Chargers was the name fans selected. Reflecting his passion for flying, Hilton, a pilot, had the idea for the team helmet to feature a lightning bolt. The eight owners of the new league called themselves “The Foolish Club,” in recognition of the challenge they faced in taking on the established NFL.

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On January 6, 1960, Los Angeles Chargers owner Barron Hilton (left) holds a football with running back Ron Waller (center) and general manager Frank Leahy.

© Los Angeles Examiner/University of Southern California Libraries—Corbis Historical/Getty Images

When the ownership group of the Minnesota franchise left to join the NFL as the Minnesota Vikings before the new league had played its first season, Hilton successfully lobbied for a replacement team in Oakland, California, so he’d have an in-state rival. That team became the Oakland Raiders (now the Las Vegas Raiders). In its first season, Hilton’s Los Angeles Chargers won 10 games and lost 4, earning a spot in the championship game against the Houston Oilers, which won the title.

But as Hilton recalled years later, the Chargers averaged just 13,000 or 14,000 fans in the cavernous Los Angeles Coliseum, which it shared with the market’s dominant established NFL team, the Los Angeles Rams. So, following a campaign led by San Diego sports columnist and editor Jack Murphy to bring the Chargers south, Hilton moved the team to San Diego after just one season.

In Hilton’s six seasons as owner, the Chargers won five division titles and one AFL championship. In 1966, the AFL and NFL announced they would merge, and that same year, Hilton sold his majority interest in the team for $10 million. (Hilton’s initial investment was just $25,000.) “The happiest days of my life were the days I was involved with the Chargers,” Hilton told the Los Angeles Times in 2009, when he was 82.

Hilton became president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Hilton Hotels Corp. in 1966, the same year he sold the Chargers, and went on to make his mark in a host of areas—perhaps most significantly with the company’s entry into the Las Vegas gambling market. Under his stewardship, the company purchased the Flamingo Hotel and Las Vegas International (which was renamed Las Vegas Hilton).

Other iconic properties owned by the chain over the years included the Waldorf Astoria and the Plaza hotels in Manhattan, the Sir Francis Drake in San Francisco, the Mayflower in Washington, and the Conrad Hilton and Palmer House in Chicago. Hilton became chair of the company in 1979 upon his father Conrad Hilton’s death.

Conrad Hilton left 97% of his estate to a foundation he had created in 1944 to benefit charitable causes such as housing for the homeless and clean water and sanitation in developing countries. Barron Hilton challenged the will and eventually reached a settlement in which he gained effective control over 34% of the company’s stock through trusts and voting power.

In 2007, he made a commitment similar to his father’s, pledging 97% of his net worth to the Conrad H. Hilton Foundation upon his death. That same year, when he was cochair of Hilton Hotels, Blackstone Group (BX) purchased the company for $26 billion.

After being acquired by Blackstone, Hilton Hotels returned to the public market in 2013. Today, it operates as Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. and trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol HLT.

Hilton’s decision to pledge nearly all of his wealth to his father’s foundation reflected a lifelong commitment to Conrad Hilton’s vision—and a desire to preserve the values behind the family name. Oppenheimer, the House of Hilton author, said Barron Hilton was embarrassed by his granddaughter Paris Hilton’s public persona. Her appearances in tabloids and on reality TV contrasted with the more conservative image Barron Hilton cultivated. In the end, Hilton chose to define his legacy not through celebrity or inheritance but through philanthropy.