QUEENSBURY – James Wesley (Jim) Hill, 96, passed
away peacefully on Wednesday, July 29, 2020, at his home on Old Mill Lane after
a brief period of declining health.
The son of Grover Cleveland and Sallie Ann
Summerlin Hill, he was born at home on Easter Sunday, April 20, 1924, in Lenoir
County, NC.
He graduated from Contentnea High School in
1941, having served as president of his senior class. After graduation, he worked briefly for a
tobacco company with locations in Kinston, NC and Lexington, KY.
In January 1944 James was drafted into the
United States Navy and sent on many missions as a hospital corpsman after his
training at Bainbridge, MD. He served on various ships in the Pacific during
World War II and on April 1, 1945 participated in the invasion of Okinawa
aboard the USS Mendocino APA 100. Other duties included the USS Tulagi CVE 72
during the operation Magic Carpet that brought troops and equipment home from
Japan.
In 1946 James enlisted in the regular Navy and
served at several locations, including the US Naval Hospital at Pearl Harbor;
the Quantico Marine Base; the US Naval Hospital in Coco Solo, Panama Canal
Zone; the US Navy Department in Washington, DC; and the US Naval Hospital at
Quantico, VA. He was in Panama when the Korean War began and enlistments were
extended for one year by President Truman.
James departed from the United State Navy as
Hospitalman 2nd Class in August 1951. He was proud of his service to
his country and was grateful for the many opportunities for personal growth
that service provided.
Following his military service, he was
employed in Glens Falls, NY by the Imperial, Color Chemical and Paper
Corporation as a laboratory technician, beginning in 1952. Later owners of the
company were Hercules and Ciba-Geigy. He was a laboratory supervisor when he
retired from Ciba-Geigy in 1983.
For many years, Jim resided on Circular Drive
in Hudson Falls in a house with a big yard that he landscaped beautifully. He
enjoyed both indoor and outdoor plants and had a talent for growing them.
Throughout the years he lived in upstate New
York, Jim still managed to get “home” to North Carolina several times each
year. After he retired, he delighted in being able to also spend several weeks
each winter with friends in Sarasota, Fl.
He was a life member of V.F.W. Post 6196 in
Queensbury.
Jim was a good, kind, thoughtful, and generous
man. Throughout his life, he easily made friends wherever he happened to be,
and he stayed in touch over the years with many of the good friends he had made
during his time in the Navy. It was during the visit to the home of one of those
friends, Ray Leroux, that he heard about a possible job at Imperial. Ray lived
with his parents, Wilfred and Regina Leroux, in a big house on Main St. in the
Village of Hudson Falls. Mr. and Mrs. Leroux urged Jim to apply for the job and
said he could stay on with them as a lodger if he was hired. Thus, Jim was welcomed
into the Leroux home then and, over the years, into the hearts of several
generations of the extended Leroux family. Always, but for the past several
years in particular, Nancy Leroux Moulton, her husband John, and their children
and grandchildren have held Jim especially close to their hearts and aided him
in ways that helped him remain as independent as possible and in his own home.
Special thanks to Michelle Moulton Hammond for
her patience, her thoughtfulness, her kind and compassionate care, and for
being an advocate for what is just and right. There are many others, too, who lovingly
helped provide heart-felt care for the man they think of as their “Uncle Jim”
as he embarked on his final journey.
Many thanks to Connie Rawlins for being a good
neighbor through the years and for her friendship, as well.
In addition to his parents, Jim is predeceased
by three brothers, William Stanley Hill, Grover Clay Hill, and Wiley Edward
Hill; and three sisters, Effie Lee Hill
Becton, Faye Hill French Mozingo, and Joyce Hill Owens Dula.
He is survived by his youngest sister, Rebecca
Hill, of Kinston, NC, as well as thirteen of the seventeen nieces and nephews
to whom he was “Uncle Wesley,” and many more in succeeding generations.
Graveside services will be held for family and
friends, with the Rev. Bob Smith officiating. Interment will take place in the
Hill family plot in the British Chapel Church Cemetery on British Road in
Kinston, NC, with the assistance of Howard-Carter Funeral Home.
Memorial donations in memory of James W. Hill
may be made to “Purrs and Paws,” P.O. Box 4197, Queensbury, NY 12804.