USC Athletics | August 06, 2020

LOS ANGELES — John Hamilton, who helped establish the USC Athletic Hall of Fame, the Newport Sports Museum and the Lott IMPACT Trophy, died Wednesday (Aug. 5) in Newport Beach of COVID-related complications. He was 78.

Services are pending.

Hamilton, a 1964 USC graduate and Orange County native, was a driving force behind the development of the USC Athletic Hall of Fame in 1994 and served as its chairman until 2015. For his efforts, he was inducted into the USC Athletic Hall of Fame in 2015.

Also in 1994, he founded the Newport Sports Museum in Newport Beach, which housed 12,000 items of sports memorabilia until closing in 2014. Besides displaying rare sports artifacts from around the world, the Newport Sports Museum's mission was to keep youngsters in school and off of drugs by getting them involved in athletics.

In 2003, Hamilton co-founded and chaired the IMPACT Foundation at the Pacific Club in Newport Beach, which annually awards the Lott IMPACT Trophy to the nation's top defensive college football player.

Hamilton worked in the real estate development and construction field. He was president of the Hamilton Company, a residential and commercial real estate agency in Newport Beach. He was involved with a number of charitable and community organizations, including Goodwill Industries, Big Brothers, The Pacific Club, USC Associates, Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation and the Richard Nixon Foundation. He received USC's Alumni Service Award.

He is survived by wife, Kathy, son John Jr., daughters Kate and Jill, brother Rick and 10 grandchildren.

His late mother, Patricia Reilly Hitt, was the first female national co-chair of a presidential campaign (for Richard Nixon in 1968) and served as assistant secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (the highest ranking woman in Nixon's first administration).