'Jack' Hilton, civil engineer who loved sea

John "Jack" Edwin Hilton II met his future wife flying 1,000 feet above Red Rocks Park in the Rocky Mountain foothills outside Denver.

Mr. Hilton was a student at the Colorado School of Mines in February 1949 and was on the last of six half-hour flights to study the area's rock formations.

He struck up a conversation with Carol Specht, a flight attendant who had agreed to work on her day off.

So many students got sick from the turbulence that day that after the third flight, "we had to return to the hangar and hose the plane out," recalled his wife, Carol Hilton, of Portland. But not Mr. Hilton, who was a bomber pilot in the South Pacific during the waning days of WWII.

The two flirted over an ammonia inhalant and chatted about classical music. Before the DC-3 charter plane landed back in Denver, he'd asked her out to lunch. They married a month later.

Mr. Hilton was a civil engineer who graduated from the University of Washington in 1953 and worked for the state Department of Transportation until his retirement in 1982.

He died Sunday, Aug. 2 from complications of Parkinson's and Lewy Body diseases at Holladay Park Plaza, a Portland retirement community. He was 85.

Mr. Hilton asked that his brain be donated to the Oregon Health & Science University in hopes it could help researchers better understand the diseases that ravaged his mind, his wife said.

Mr. Hilton was born Jan. 26, 1924, in Glenwood Springs, Colo., the elder of two sons born to Howard and Zella Hilton.

The family moved to Kirkland when Mr. Hilton was a child and he graduated from Juanita High School.

He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in May 1942 and flew B-29 bombers in the South Pacific.

At the end of the war, he returned to the Denver area, where he spent a semester at the Colorado School of Mines, his father's alma mater, before transferring to the UW.

Over the course of their 60-year marriage, Mr. Hilton and his wife lived in Bothell, Yakima, Olympia and La Conner. They also lived in a houseboat on Seattle's Lake Union and were members of the Corinthian Yacht Club. They moved to Portland in 2004.

"He really enjoyed life and he was a very friendly guy — he could meet almost anybody and strike up a conversation," said Brian Henkel, of Bellevue, a longtime friend and fellow engineer who met Mr. Hilton when he started working for the state in 1956. "He was a real fun guy and he certainly liked to finish up the day with a good cocktail."

Mr. Hilton was a fan of opera — his favorite was "Tristan und Isolde" — and was a loyal subscriber to Seattle Opera from its inception in 1963, his wife said.

In 1974, Mr. Hilton and his wife bought a 50-foot ketch named "Bluebird of Thorne." A lifelong sailor, Mr. Hilton skippered the double-masted boat from New Zealand to Hawaii.

"We did a lot of traveling, and not just on the boat," Carol Hilton said, recalling trips through the canals of France and down the coast of Central America.

She described her husband as "quiet and funny" and said he was passionate about bridge, sailing and music.

In 1995, the couple was on a cruise that started in the Bahamas when a fellow traveler, a physician who had Parkinson's disease, questioned Mr. Hilton about his handwriting and shuffling gait, Carol Hilton said. He recommended that Mr. Hilton see his own doctor when he returned home.

Eight years after Mr. Hilton was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, doctors at Oregon Health & Science University also diagnosed him with Lewy Body disease, a type of dementia.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Hilton is survived by his son and daughter-in-law, John E. Hilton III and Kerstin Hilton, of Portland; his brother Howard Judd Hilton Jr., of Venice, Fla.; and his late cousin's wife, Ruth Coffin Schroeder, of Seattle.

A celebration of Mr. Hilton's life will be at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Holladay Park Plaza, 1300 N.E. 16th Ave., Portland.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations in Mr. Hilton's name to Seattle Opera (1301 Fifth Ave., Suite 3024, Seattle WA 98101) or the Northwest Parkinson's Foundation (400 Mercer. St., Suite 401, Seattle WA 98109).

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com