Bill Hillegonds has traveled across the country, charted group trips and made countless detours that put him on the path of one glowing, ivory-enameled franchise synonymous with sliders: White Castle.
Now those same navigational instincts will lead this Northwest Indiana man to his ultimate journey: the White Castle headquarters where he will be inducted into the Craver Hall of Fame.
Hillegonds, of Cedar Lake, is among the 14 inductees who will travel on an all-expenses-paid visit to White Castle’s home office in Ohio, ending in an induction ceremony on April 29. Each inductee will be gifted with a Hall of Fame blue blazer, a plaque with their name on itm and a photo that will adorn the Cravers Hall of Fame.
Hillegonds, a longtime youth leader for Bethel Church ministries, said he has eaten at more than 100 different White Castles across the country.
“I started noticing that I had eaten at a lot of different White Castles — not just the same one every time,” He said. “And so I emailed White Castle and asked if they could send me a list of all the White Castles in the United States of America. Then I started purposely checking them off. When my wife and I would go on vacation or something like that, if we saw one of the road signs that said, ‘White Castle next exit,’ we would just pull off and maybe just get a couple sliders and go from there. So I kept adding those up.”
While the recognition and trip is something he looks forward to, Hillegonds is mostly excited for his story to join the hundreds of others printed on the iconic slider boxes.
“If you go to White Castle and you read the box on the back, they have all the stories of all the people that are in the Cravers Hall of Fame,” Hillegonds said. “So, if they still do that, that’s going to be really cool, for anyone anywhere to know my story.”
How does one become a Hall of Fame Craver? White Castle spokesperson Kerelle Sampson said the Cravers Hall of Fame was created in 2001 to celebrate the brand’s most passionate fans. Currently, the club has less than 300 members, including Alice Cooper and Stan Lee.
Each year, White Castle opens up submissions for its Hall of Fame, in which individuals can submit a written story about their connection with White Castle and why they are contenders for the title. Currently, submissions are open via email and on whitecastle.com until Sept. 30.
After being implored by students and friends to enter the competition, Hillegonds sent in his story in 2025 and forgot all about it — until he received a call in January from the White Castle vice-president.
Hillegonds said considering there are about 400 to 500 applications each year for the Cravers Hall of Fame, he didn’t expect to hear back.
The story Hillegonds told in his letter that elevated him into the Hall of Fame happened in 2012, when he was pulled into an Ed Sheeran mini road trip. A group of teens in the youth group approached him about chaperoning a concert trip to Chicago.
“Why would I want to go see Ed Sheeran? I don’t even know who he is,” Hillegonds said. “They go, well, here’s the deal. And they pulled out a packet, which I’m going to take with me to the induction. …They had printed out a Google map of the music venue Ed was going to be at, and all the White Castles surrounding it. And to me, it was really a no-brainer because it was like, ‘Okay, these kids are getting a concert and I’m getting a night out and enjoying a bunch of different White Castles. I think I hit six that night.”
When White Castle’s 90th anniversary came around, the company issued a competition for fans to build structures out of slider boxes and crave cases to win a lifetime supply of White Castle. Hillegonds accepted the challenge and, with the help of some determined high school students, they created a towering fortress.
“We went on a Wednesday night late to the one in Schererville,” he said. “We ate 150 White Castle burgers that night, and we built this castle out of all the boxes, and we had straws doing the drawbridge and everything else. It was impressive.”
His craving has earned a reputation in which students, friends and family gift him White Castle memorabilia and plan trips around slider pit stops. Hillegonds and his wife Shelly have been married for 40 years. She said by their second date, her future husband popped the big question.
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“When we first started dating, he asked me if I liked White Castle,” Shelly Hillegonds said. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, I love White Castle.’ My dad loved White Castle and so, between that and both of us liking the White Sox, it was, you know, a match made in heaven, so to speak.”
Today, the restaurant chain is one of their favorite date night destinations, whether it’s a quick detour to the Schererville location at the U.S. 30 and U.S. 41 crossroads, or a road trip to one of their favorite locations in Stoney Island, Illinois or Lafayette, Indiana. They’ve even sparked their own tradition to “treasure hunt” with friends.
“We have done a weekend with our friends, we called it ‘Castle and Caching’,” Shelly Hillegonds said. “And the entire weekend, we went around and found geocaches and ate at all the different White Castles. That was our thing we made up ourselves.”
And while the path to the Cravers Hall of Fame may be paved with slider boxes, Bill Hillegonds said it has been marked by the relationships that grew along the way.
“One of the best ways to build a relationship with people is over a meal,” he said. “And so building relationships with teenagers, you build this bond. Even today at school, I had one of my students ask, ‘Are we going to White Castle tonight?’ …I think it’s a thing where, you know, it’s not only going there for the food, but it’s also going there so that I can have great conversation. And a lot of times, the conversation goes beyond the surface. It will get into their world- whether it’s their joys, their sadness, their struggles. And that’s true for anyone.”
Anna Ortiz is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.