After his wartime discharge, he attended the University of Southern California Aeronautical School, where he earned his twin-engine rating at age 19.

[5] Before joining his father in the hotel industry, Barron Hilton honed his business skills in a variety of entrepreneurial ventures.

He acquired the Los Angeles-area distributorship of Vita-Pakt Citrus Products, co-founded MacDonald Oil Company, and founded Air Finance Corporation, one of the nation's first aircraft leasing businesses.

The Chargers began playing at the Coliseum in 1960, but in spite of winning the Western Division, the club found it difficult to compete for fans with the Rams of the National Football League (NFL) in their own stadium.

Hilton moved the team to San Diego in time for the 1961 season and played in tiny Balboa Stadium, which the city had expanded to 30,000 seats.

With the availability of a new stadium, the city received a baseball expansion franchise from the National League, and the San Diego Padres began play in 1969.

[7] With the death of the Bills' Ralph Wilson in 2014, Hilton became the last surviving member of the Foolish Club—the nickname the original AFL owners gave each other, as they absorbed the start-up expenses and player salaries necessary to compete with the established NFL.

Calling on his background in photography, he installed video cameras throughout the casinos to replace the "eye in the sky" system of observers peering through two-way mirrors in the ceiling.

After a decade in the movies, Elvis Presley again began performing in front of live audiences in 1969 at the opening of the International (a few years later renamed the Las Vegas Hilton).

Barron Hilton was a major influence in pushing Liberace to always outperform his previous shows, with more and more of the entertainer's famous brand of showmanship.

Perhaps more importantly, the sale proved that these hotels were worth double their book value, demonstrating the underlying value of the company's real estate holdings.

After seeing his father struggle to overcome the effects of the Great Depression and World War II, he maintained the strongest balance sheet in the industry.

[citation needed] Throughout his 30 years as CEO, he carried a low debt-to-capital ratio and a high credit rating, enabling him to gobble up such properties as Bally's Reno (formerly the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino-Reno).

With strong cash flow and plenty of liquid investments on hand, he was able to weather the inevitable recessions and business interruptions that struck the industry from the mid-'60s to the mid-'90s.

[20][independent source needed] Hilton continued as chairman of the board through the next decade as his hand-picked successor, Steve Bollenbach, dramatically expanded the company through a series of mergers and acquisitions.

[citation needed] In his will, Conrad also gave Barron the right to purchase those shares in order to maintain family control of the company, but the foundation challenged the option in probate court.

Hilton's right to exercise his option was upheld in an appeals court ruling in March 1988, giving him voting power over roughly 34 percent of the company's outstanding shares.

[27][29] The remainder of the funds that constitute Hilton's pledge of 97 percent of his estate will come from his personal assets, which were estimated at $1.1 billion at the time.

As the funds you will expend have come from many places in the world, so let there be no territorial, religious, or color restrictions on your benefactions, but beware of organized, professional charities with high-salaried executives and a heavy ratio of expense.

Give aid to their protectors and defenders, the Sisters, who devote their love and life's work for the good of mankind, for they appeal especially to me as being deserving of help from the Foundation.

Pilots who flew the longest triangular flights during each two-year period in six regions of the world earned participation in a weeklong soaring camp at his Flying M Ranch.

[33] Over the years, a number of notable pilots regularly joined Hilton for weekends at the Flying M. They include entertainers John Denver and Cliff Robertson; astronauts Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Bill Anders, and Ulf Merbold; and test pilots and record-holders: Chuck Yeager, Johnny Myers, Clay Lacy, Bruno GanTenbrink, Bob Hoover, Carroll Shelby, Sully Sullenberger, and air, sea and land adventurer, Steve Fossett.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined the probable cause(s) of this accident to be "the pilot's inadvertent encounter with downdrafts that exceeded the climb capability of the airplane.

The gallery includes an early childhood education component funded by the Hilton Foundation to help youngsters catch the same enthusiasm for aviation that he discovered as a child when Lindbergh and Earhart were making headlines.

[37] For his lifelong support of aviation, Hilton received the prestigious FAI Gold Air Medal from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in 2009, the same award bestowed upon some of his closest friends and personal heroes, like Yeager, Armstrong, Cernan, Jones, Fossett, and Lindbergh himself.

[38] In 2012, Hilton was also inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame in San Diego, and was hailed as the "patron saint of sport aviation.

Hilton and several friends purchased the 475,000-acre Flying-M Ranch in Lyon County, Nevada (the property stretched across the California state line) in the mid-1960s, and he bought the others out in 1972.

Hilton was a member of a duck club on Venice Island in the Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta near Stockton in Northern California.