The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (3 page)

Conrad’s summer vacations were spent back in San Antonio, working for five dollars a month at A. H. Hilton, an ever-growing business that now housed the post office, the telegraph office, the Studebaker dealership, a livery stable, and a lumber/building materials operation. Gus Hilton was nothing if not entrepreneurial. Not only was he managing the store, but he also bartered with prospectors, giving them provisions, clothing, food, and money in return for a percentage of their profits. On some days he would take off into the wilderness to sell tobacco and food to beaver trappers, sometimes trading his goods for theirs. Gus was busy all of the time, tough and unyielding not only in business but at home as well; he expected a lot of his children, but mostly from Conrad. Actually, he saw something of himself in Connie, and wanted nothing more than to see the boy make something of himself. Therefore, he pressured him a great deal and was often critical when some observers felt it may have better served the boy to just be encouraging.

If Conrad believed his yeoman’s work for his father would be rewarded with any sort of permanent position at A. H. Hilton, he was wrong. In the fall, he was off to another school, St. Michael’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a move that, once more, he was dead set against having to make. He implored his mother that it was “a great waste of time. All the things I want to know I am learning at home.” Mary Hilton was not moved, however, arguing that he would have plenty of time to learn his father’s business—later. What Conrad needed at this time in his life, she reasoned, was a solid foundation. End of argument. Thus Conrad transferred to St. Michael’s College, where he stayed for two years, once again spending summer vacations working in Gus’s general store, but now at an increase in salary to fifteen dollars a month.

Along with Conrad’s salary raise, at fifteen he shot up in height to six feet, making him almost as tall as his father. Though they could now look at each other eyeball to eyeball, the son’s increase in stature did not alter Gus’s attitude toward him; he was still a stern, overbearing taskmaster, giving Conrad more responsibility in running the store, but riding herd on him every step along the way and questioning his every decision and suggestion.

That summer, with all the hard work he was doing and lessons he was learning, Conrad Hilton would feel quite often with the passing years that something was lacking in his life. One day, he found on his mother’s sewing table a copy of a book by Helen Keller, the twenty-three-year-old Alabama native, born deaf and blind. Late into the night in his room, he surreptitiously read her autobiography,
Optimism
, the message of which he found transformative. Keller wrote, “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope,” and, “Optimism is the harmony between man’s spirit and the spirit of God pronouncing His works good.” These precepts were in perfect alignment with those already instilled in Conrad by his mother. With a newfound courage gleaned from Keller’s book, Conrad eventually announced to his parents that he would not be returning to school. His decision was final, he said, even though he was only fifteen. Gus responded without appearing to show the slightest sign of annoyance. “All right,” he decided. “I guess you’ll be worth twenty-five dollars a month on a full-time basis.” And, surprisingly enough, his mother, Mary, went along with it too. “I believe now, looking back, that my parents took note of my conviction, and this encouraged them to change their minds,” he would later explain. “I must say, I did make a good case for myself.”

By 1904, Gus’s skillful operation of his store enabled him to become quite wealthy, not just from the store’s booming success, but also from smart investments, one of which was in the mining business. Known throughout the territory as “Colonel Hilton,” he then added to his fortune by selling a coal mine for $135,000. Feeling flush and generous, he treated the entire family to a vacation trip to St. Louis for the World’s Fair, celebrating the centennial of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, and also the site of the Summer Olympic Games, the first to be held in the United States. Emboldened by the journey, Gus soon decided that a change of scenery was in order for his family. After researching the towns on the Pacific in Southern California, he decided that Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, would be an ideal place in which to settle down, with its warm climate and easier lifestyle. Upon their arrival, Mary immediately enrolled the children in school, convincing Connie to now finish his education. They lived there until Conrad finished high school. Meanwhile, Gus went back and forth to San Antonio, tending to his store, to which Connie (and the rest of the family) would return when his schooldays were over.

In 1907, the financial panic that came without warning hit the country and all but wiped out Gus Hilton’s finances. Gathering his family about him, Gus spelled out the dire situation and asked for suggestions. Casting his eyes upon the floor, nineteen-year-old Conrad after a few moments of silence looked up, broke into a smile, and announced, “We should open a hotel. Let’s take five or six of our ten rooms [of the house in which they lived] and make a hotel. This place needs a hotel!” Conrad further suggested that while his father ran the hotel, his mother and sisters could handle kitchen duty. He would be responsible for baggage. He further speculated that two and a half dollars a day for each bed would be a reasonable amount to charge guests. Much to his amazement, his father actually thought the idea might work! One might say that this suggestion was Conrad Hilton’s first real brainstorm—the first of many, as it would happen.

Within six weeks, news of the new hotel spread throughout the area and all the way to Chicago: “[The word was that] if you have to break up your sales trip, break it at San Antonio and try to get a room at Hilton’s,” Conrad later recalled to author Whitney Bolton. “They serve the best meals in the West and they have a boy there who is a crackerjack at making things comfortable for you.” He added, “Everyone got something out of our hotel. Travelers got cleanliness, comfort and a good table for their $2.50 a day, even though we served three bountiful meals. We all worked hard, and no one harder than my mother. I wouldn’t take a million dollars for what those days taught me… and I’d give a million dollars for one of the suppers she served.” Not only did Conrad manage the hotel, but he worked the desk, was the concierge, and did pretty much everything he could think of to keep the enterprise afloat. His father was pleased, though of course not exactly effusive with his praise. However, he indicated his pride in his son by giving him control of the store in San Antonio when he turned twenty-one. It would now be called A. H. Hilton and Son.

With the family solvent thanks to Conrad’s bright idea, he enrolled at the New Mexico School of Mines at nearby Socorro, close enough that he could spend weekends in San Antonio or overnight if he were needed. What he learned in Socorro proved invaluable as he excelled at higher mathematics, providing “the best possible mental muscles necessary” for whatever career he would choose.

In 1911, when he was twenty-four, the Territory of New Mexico was admitted to the Union, and over Gus’s strenuous objections—and also those of his brother Carl, who was now attending the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland—Conrad entered the political arena. He was swiftly elected to a seat in the lower house of the new state’s first legislature, serving one two-year term as New Mexico’s youngest representative. He would go on to author eight bills, one having to do with prohibiting violence in motion pictures, another with proper highway markers. “It seemed that he could do pretty much anything he set out to do,” said his son Barron, “and when he entered politics, which was a bit of a surprise turn for him, people began to see that he had big ambitions, that he didn’t feel there was a ceiling to what he could achieve.”

A handsome young man by this time, Conrad Hilton had a full head of brown hair parted on the right, a wide nose, penetrating blue-green eyes, and a full mouth. With his New Mexican drawl, he seemed polite and affable to all who crossed his path. Because he found working as a lawmaker slow and dull, his days in that field were now numbered, by his own admission—even though he hated proving his father right. His social life was anything but boring, though. He was out on the town every night, attending lavish balls at the state capitol, becoming a popular member of Santa Fe high society, and proving to be a proficient and much sought-after dancing partner.

Returning to San Antonio, more frustrated and more determined than ever to make it without his father’s help and counsel, Conrad Hilton reasoned that since there was no bank in his small hometown, he would become a banker. Once again, Gus warned against it, arguing that the town was much too small for a bank, and besides, there were banks already established in nearby Socorro. Undeterred, and with about $30,000—$3,000 of it his own and the rest scrounged from friends and investors—Conrad opened the New Mexico State Bank of San Antonio in September 1913. Though he was just twenty-six, he believed that the locals would entrust their savings to his new bank. However, customers failed to materialize and by year’s end the bank would close its doors. Another failure. Would his father always be right?

Restless for new challenges, in 1916, Conrad, at twenty-nine, took on the management of a musical group formed by his violin-playing sister Eva with two of her female friends, calling themselves the Hilton Trio. These girls were a real sight in their long, full skirts (which buttoned down the middle) wrapped by wide cloth belts, long-sleeved flouncy blouses, and enormous picture hats. Always the great multitasker, not only was Conrad their manager, but he was their agent and roadie as well. Though his father warned him that the undertaking was risky and likely to fail, Conrad was certain that people would flock to see the trio. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Despite his best efforts, his first entrance into show business was a colossal failure, barely breaking even in the course of a year. Failing was bad enough, but failing in front of his critical father was much worse.

There seemed nothing more for Conrad to do but to return to the store, and since Gus had by this time given him stock in it, now perhaps he would be recognized as an equal partner not just in name but in profits. However, fate intervened and changed his course.

In 1915, the British liner the RMS
Lusitania
had been sent to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean after being hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat. Two years later in April 1917, with Germany continuing its U-boat assaults on ships in the North Atlantic, including those of the United States, the country, which President Woodrow Wilson had managed to keep neutral, joined the Allied powers in the fight against Germany in the First World War. Conrad, having recently completed Army Officer Training School and been commissioned a second lieutenant, was eager for an assignment at the front lines. The Army had other ideas. Capitalizing on Hilton’s experience in and knowledge of the dry goods business, the Army assigned him to the Quartermaster Corps, headquartered in Paris, a safe distance from the battles that still raged. By day, his duties were mundane and the work quite easy, and by night he became a fixture at the cafés and bistros off the Champs-Elysées. He was enormously popular and cut quite a figure in his officer’s uniform, a good-looking fellow with a great smile and winning personality.

Being in France gave Conrad a new worldview and expanded his scope of experience outside of his humble beginnings. “Before, I had been a big frog in a small pond,” he said, “now [in Paris] I realized I was just a tadpole in a big ocean.” However, interrupting his joie de vivre, shortly after the Armistice was signed, he received a shocking telegram from his mother telling him that his father had died and asking him to come home.

Though Conrad hastily made plans to return to the States, he arrived too late. The funeral had already been held and his father buried. He was shattered that he was unable to pay his last respects to the often critical father he still loved very much and respected deeply. As it happened, Gus had been the owner of the town’s first automobile, which, from photographs, looked pretty much like a broken-down old jalopy. It was in this Ford that he was killed on January 1, 1919, the town’s first death by car accident when the vehicle failed to negotiate a turn in the road. Although Conrad knew full well that his father would have wanted him to take over the family business, he realized that San Antonio’s boom days were over. If he were ever to make it big, it wouldn’t be here.

Hotelier

I
ronically, the automotive technology that had claimed the life of Conrad Hilton’s father would be the impetus that would propel Conrad to his next venture—the oilfields of Texas. He wouldn’t be a wildcatter, though. Instead, he would exploit the booming support apparatus that was springing up around the oil industry. “Black gold” was making millionaires overnight and Conrad wanted a piece of that action. Of course, his mother could have asked him to stay with her, but she wouldn’t have thought to do it. As he later recalled, “Once again, my mother’s faith was like a rock. One word from her that she needed me and I would have played out my hand in Socorro. But she gave me no such word. She could lose her husband, her companion of thirty-four years, and turn right around and send her oldest son, who had just come home, away again. She loved us both. She knew grief. But she did not know the meaning of fear or loneliness or dependence on human agencies because her protector would never leave her or forsake her. And so it was my mother who said very firmly, ‘You’ll have to find your own frontier, Connie.’ ”

With $5,000, his entire life savings, pinned to the inside of his coat, Conrad Hilton—now thirty-two—soon after struck out for Texas, landing in the small, blustering town of Cisco in the spring of 1919. By this time, the tall New Mexican had begun to lose his hair, but he still cut quite a figure in his natty three-piece suits, always with a silk tie that was perfectly knotted. “I thought, dreamed, schemed of nothing but how to get a toehold in this amazing pageant that was Texas,” he later recalled. Here, he felt, he could finally fulfill that long-held dream to own a bank. Soon after arriving, he heard of one for sale in Cisco and met with the owner, who agreed upon a price. But as fate would have it, the banker reneged, upping the original, mutually established selling price. Frustrated and bitterly disappointed, Conrad retreated to a nearby hotel called the Mobley to ponder his next move.