William Anthony Hitschler

William Anthony Hitschler, 82, of Villanova, an investment adviser, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, died June 28 2020, at the City of Hope Hospital in Pasadena, Calif., where he was being treated for leukemia. Mr. Hitschler was diagnosed last November and moved in December to undergo a bone marrow stem cell transplant. The transplant succeeded; he died of a heart ailment, said his wife, Lynn Leonard Claytor Hitschler. Born in Chestnut Hill, he graduated from Springside Chestnut Hill Academy and then Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. He completed training to become a certified financial analyst at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. An investment adviser with more than a half-century of experience, Mr. Hitschler was an early proponent of value investing. He wrote a defining paper on value investing that led to his appointment as president and CEO of Provident Capital Management, an affiliate of Provident National Bank. When five of the six equity analysts left the firm in 1980, taking their accounts with them, Mr. Hitschler stayed on to rebuild the shattered company. In 1986, Mr. Hitschler left Provident Capital – by that time in good shape – to create Brandywine Asset Management and become its president. In 1998, Brandywine was bought out by Legg Mason Inc. The firm became Brandywine Global Investment Management, an independent subsidiary of Legg Mason based in Philadelphia. Mr. Hitschler was married three times, first to Diana Timmerman in 1960, then to Diana Cecala, and in 2000 to Lynn Leonard Claytor. He and his wife, Lynn, traveled the world from Antarctica to Egypt. Besides his wife and former wives, he is survived by children Sandra Thompson and Pam Nagy; stepchildren Eric and Hugh Peterson, as well as Tom, Brannon, and Warren Claytor, and Cassandra Carroll; 18 grandchildren; two sisters; and three nieces. A daughter, Wendy Rehn Hitschler, died in 2018.