Issue date: May 27, 1998
By MARION SOFTKY
The wall of Stanley Hiller's office at the new Hiller Aviation Museum is covered with company plaques. These represent a different and surprising facet of a man who is best known for building helicopters in Menlo Park from 1946 to 1964.
For the last 30 years, Mr. Hiller has specialized in taking troubled companies and restoring them to profitability. The plaques represent just some of the 32 companies he has successfully turned around through the Hiller Investment Company, based at 3000 Sand Hill Road. "I've gone in at the request of banks or families and rebuilt them into very profitable entities," he says in an interview in his airy office with a picture window facing planes taking off from the San Carlos Airport.
York International is one. "It's the granddaddy of all air conditioning companies," he says.
Other names on the wall include Bekins movers; Bristol Compressors; Reed Tool, which makes drilling bits for oil wells; and Pacific Concrete and Rock. Most were older companies that got in trouble because "the market has changed and management hasn't," he says.
While these efforts have brought great satisfaction, Mr. Hiller is turning back to the field where he made his first mark. "These companies probably return a number of billions of dollars to their stockholders, and it all started with a little company called Hiller Aircraft, somewhere."
Indeed, during those 20 years Mr. Hiller's start-up churned out more than 3,000 helicopters at its plant on Willow Road. Besides helicopters, there were innovations, like the flying platform and its airplane successor, the Coleopter; a surveillance satellite, built for the government under direction of Lockheed at Hiller's plant; and a tilt-wing transport, pictured on his office wall, that could take off vertically and then fly forward. "This will reappear," he prophesies.
A fifth-generation Californian, Mr. Hiller was raised in Berkeley and learned to fly in 1937 in a Varney Airlines -- later United -- airplane now on display in the museum.
Not a young Icarus in love with flying, his motives were more down-to-earth. "My desire was to build a business. I was driven by the thought of new opportunities in vertical lift," he says.
Mr. Hiller, who would rather talk about machines and vision than himself, admits there were some adventures on the way to building successful helicopters. "We used to land in and out of Berkeley. No one had ever seen a helicopter out here," he recalls. "I've been in three major crashes. I couldn't afford a fourth."
Mr. Hiller and his wife, Caroline, have lived in Atherton for the last 50 years.
Hiller Aircraft Co. incorporated in 1942, produced its first official helicopter in 1944, and moved to Menlo Park in 1946, Mr. Hiller says. It was one of four helicopter companies in the country, the only one in the West. Since then it's racked up numerous firsts, including the first helicopter to be licensed as inherently stable. "It can fly itself," Mr. Hiller says.
After 20 years building helicopters, Hiller Aircraft merged with Fairchild, the Menlo Park plant closed, and Mr. Hiller moved into his new career of working with troubled companies.
He didn't cut all his ties with airplanes, however, and began his collection. "I left aircraft, but I wanted to keep in touch," he says. "I collected with the feeling there was a great opportunity to link past and future together."
Linking past and future is what the Hiller Aviation Museum does. "It's been fun," he says.
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