Jacob Moore Hilton

Jake Hilton, 53, passed away in his Flower Mound, Texas home on December 2nd, 2024.

Celebration of Life is 11:00 a.m. Saturday, January 18th, 2025 at First United Methodist Church in Decatur, Texas.

Jake, a fourth-generation Wise County native, was born January 16th, 1971 to Deborah Moore Hilton and Michael Lynn Hilton. He graduated from Decatur High School in 1989, a class officer, national Honor Society member, and multi-sport athlete (baseball and football, member of the 1988 Eagles team that went to the 3A state semi-finals), voted by his senior class peers as “Most Likely to Take a Dare”. He earned a BA in English in 1994 from the University of Texas at Austin, and a J.D. from the Texas Tech University School of Law in 1999, where he was on the Law Review.

Jake started his career with Funimation Productions Ltd. In 2000, growing with the company as its General Counsel and often sole member of the legal department through the company’s acquisition by Sony and its acquisition of Crunchyroll, most recently serving as Crunchyroll’s VP, Business & Legal Affairs. His colleagues, in an online tribute, describe him over and over again as kind, warm, welcoming, patient: a sharp and creative legal mind with a great sense of humor; always willing to explain, teach, and learn.

It was at Funimation that he met his future wife, Jill Shotts, who joined the company as an associate in another department in 2004 and has since risen to Director, Licensing. Dating since 2005, they were married in a destination wedding in Cancun, Mexico on May 6th, 2011, with dozens of friends and family from far and wide there to celebrate. They made their home in Flower Mound, Texas, which became a social hub for their circle, made it easy to travel the world together, and was close enough to get back to Decatur for the Wise County Old Settlers Reunion every summer.

Jake is survived by his wife, Jill Hilton; his sisters, Lydia Lee (Hilton) Markoff of San Jose, California and Lesley Lynn (Hilton) Eckles of Nampa, Idaho, and their families; Uncle Jack Russell “Rusty” Moore and Aunt Emma (Read) Moore of Ft. Worth, Texas; Great-Aunt Sally Sanford of Decatur; Aunt Patricia Hilton of Lexington, Kentucky, and numerous cousins, second cousins, in-laws, and out-laws-plus innumerable friends, colleagues, acquaintances and his four cats – Elsa, Dash, Lyra and Loki-who will miss the truly unique person that he was.