O. Warren Hillgren, 81; served as councilman after helping La Canada Flintridge attain cityhood

O. Warren Hillgren, who helped La Canada Flintridge attain cityhood in 1976 and then spent 16 years on its City Council, including four as mayor, has died. He was 81.

Hillgren died Monday of complications from Parkinson’s disease at his home in La Canada Flintridge, said his son Greg.

“He had a major role in shaping the community,” said David Spence, the city’s mayor pro tem. “In the first five years of cityhood, he was extremely hands-on, adapting county ordinances we adopted.”

As a city leader, Hillgren was credited with helping devise protective land-use planning strategies that became La Canada Flintridge’s hallmark, his son said.

In the first decade of cityhood, city leaders worked zealously to preserve the area’s semi-rural character, The Times reported in 1986. The community at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains had incorporated to ward off possible annexation by neighboring Pasadena and Glendale.

When the hottest local issue in a 1978 election was whether to widen the 50-year-old Berkshire Bridge, Hillgren told The Times: “If that is the biggest problem we ever have in town ... then La Canada Flintridge is, and always will be, in good health.”

Colleagues elevated Hillgren to the largely ceremonial post of mayor for a fifth one-year term in 1989. But he resigned two weeks later after the Foothill Leader newspaper pointed out a policy that forbids a council member to serve as mayor more than once in four years. He had last been mayor in 1986.

Oscar Warren Hillgren was born in Casper, Wyo., and raised in Glendale.

During World War II, he commanded an anti-submarine vessel for the Navy, his son said.

After the war, Hillgren earned a bachelor’s degree from USC in 1947 and a master’s in business administration two years later from Harvard University.

He moved to La Canada Flintridge in 1954 and embarked on a career in public relations in the oil business. Hillgren moved to Houston for five years in the early 1970s to become director of advertising for Gulf Oil Corp. He later started a car-leasing business.

His first wife, Mary Ellen, to whom he was married for 43 years, died in 1995. His second wife, Virginia, died in 1999.

In addition to his son Greg of Rancho Santa Fe, Hillgren is survived by two other sons, Kevin of London and Bradley of Newport Beach; a sister, JoAnn McCoy of La Canada Flintridge; and seven grandchildren.

Services are pending.

Instead of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Hillgren Memorial LCF Community Benefit Fund, in care of the Pasadena Community Foundation, 260 S. Los Robles Ave., Suite 119, Pasadena, CA 91101.

valerie.nelson@latimes.com