Charles Hillinger; wandering feature writer for The Times told stories of common, colorful people.
OBITUARY
He wrote nearly 6,000 human interest stories for the paper before retiring in 1992. The Beatles, desert hermits and the homeless were on his wide-ranging beat.
Charles Hillinger, the Los Angeles Times' retired roving feature writer and columnist who traversed the highways and byways of California, America and beyond in pursuit of colorful characters and human-interest stories, has died. He was 82.
Hillinger, who battled melanoma cancer for 18 months and was hospitalized in early April, died in his sleep Monday evening at a nursing home in Rancho Palos Verdes, said his son, Brad.
Beginning his career at The Times in 1946 in the editorial library, Hillinger soon became a general-assignment reporter. He eventually began focusing on feature writing and wrote nearly 6,000 human-interest stories before retiring from the paper in 1992.
His feature stories and 1985-91 column, "Charles Hillinger's America," were syndicated by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service to more than 600 newspapers.
As a Times reporter, Hillinger had his share of interesting assignments.
He covered the Beatles during their visit to Los Angeles in 1964 to perform at the Hollywood Bowl, providing a behind-the-scenes report on the "mop-haired Liverpudlians" as they relaxed in their Bel-Air hideaway, where they swam and played cowboys with toy pistols sent over by Elvis Presley.
He also was aboard the aircraft carrier Hornet in 1969 to report on the historic splash-down in the Pacific of the Apollo 11 mission-to-the-moon astronauts -- "back home from man's greatest adventure."
But it's because of his stories about people from all walks of life -- and their sometimes unusual pursuits -- that Hillinger is best remembered.
He called them "slices of America," and they were, as former Times publisher Otis Chandler once put it, "a lively and refreshing contrast to the hard news stories of the day."
William F. Thomas, the paper's editor from 1971 to 1989, praised Hillinger for being "a hell of a good reporter" who "never wrote a dull story."
"He had an amazing amount of energy, and he was a very prolific writer," said Thomas, who worked closely with Hillinger as metro editor. "He used to have stories stacked on my desk. I kept telling him I couldn't use him every day without wearing out the public, but they were all good.
"He just never stopped writing and going; he was just a dynamo."
As a staff writer, Hillinger had the luxury of picking his own subjects -- and a diverse lot it was.
