Wangeman, former Hilton Hotels exec, dead at 88

Nation's Restaurant News, June 26, 2000

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. -- Frank Wangeman, a former director for Hilton Hotels Corp. and honorary trustee of The Culinary Institute of America, died May22 at his home here, after a seven-year battle with cancer. He was 88.

Wangeman also held directorships at the New York City Convention & Visitor's Bureau, the New York State Hotel & Motel Association, the American Hotel & Motel Association, the Better Business Bureau of Greater New York, Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City, the Bank of Tokyo Trust Co. in New York and others. He was decorated with the Order of the Sacred Treasure on behalf of the emperor of Japan.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Wangeman apprenticed at the Lausanne Palace hotel in Switzerland and graduated from Lausanne's hotel school before beginning his career in the service industry as a room service waiter at The Ritz in London.

He went on to Paris, where he worked as a receptionist at the George V and studied at the Sorbonne. He then came to work at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria, where he became assistant manager at the age of 23. Nine years later, when Conrad Hilton bought the Plaza Hotel, Wangeman became Hilton's personal assistant there and spent the rest of his career with the Hilton Hotels Corp.

After stints in California and Puerto Rico, Wangeman returned to New York in 1951, eventually becoming executive vice president and managing director of the Waldorf-Astoria, where he stayed with his family for the next 22 years. During that time he became senior vice president of Hilton Hotels, responsible for the company's Eastern division, and completed the advanced management program at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

He was elected a Hilton director in 1971; and although he retired as an officer of the corporation in 1982, he remained a director until 1986 and an honorary director until his death.

He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Marie of Santa Barbara; son Henry of Oaxaca, Mexico; son Conrad of Pittsburgh; daughter Alberta Lamson of Seattle; daughter Marie Sheppard of Las Vegas; and nine grandchildren. His fifth child, Frank Jr., died in 1975.

The family requests donations be made to the Frank Wangeman Scholarship Fund at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., or the Cancer Center of Santa Barbara.