Merlin R. "Ray" HILL

HILL, BUCKLIN, PHELPS, WARD, HODGES

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 5/5/2008 at 15:30:34

Lewiston Morning Tribune (Idaho)
April 7, 1993

MERLIN "RAY" HILL, 86, OF PULLMAN, RETIRED GROCER

PULLMAN, WA--Services for Merlin R. (Ray) Hill, a retired businessman and retail clerk, will be 1:30 p.m. Thursday at Kimball Funeral Home in Pullman. The Rev. Jack Leininger will officiate. Burial will be at Pullman City Cemetery.

Hill, 86, died of causes related to age Sunday at Clarkston Care Center. He and his wife, Mildred Bucklin Hill, had lived at Clarkston since 1983. He was born July 10, 1906, at Belmond, Iowa, to Ohmer Dennis Hill and Mary Phelps Hill. The family moved to Barton, N.D., when he was an infant. When Hill was 5, the family took an immigrant train to north central Montana, where his parents homesteaded north of Inverness at the Minneota community. As a young man, Hill moved to the Bear Paw Mountain area of Montana, where he worked for three years as a ranch hand. In 1931, he moved to Havre, where he worked as a butcher and retail clerk for a market.

On April 9, 1933, he married Mildred Bucklin at Havre. Hill owned a service station/grocery store at Havre from 1940 to 1957 and worked as a clerk in various other Montana stores until 1980, when he retired and moved to Pullman with his wife. The couple moved to Clarkston in 1983. Hill was a hunter and fisherman when he was young and took up gardening in his later years. He was a member of the Methodist Church and the Masonic Lodge and Elks Lodge in Montana.

Survivors, in addition to his wife, include two sons, James Hill of Pullman and Leland Hill of Pocatello; two brothers, Wesley Hill of Salem, Ore., and Walter Hill of Fortuna, Calif.; two sisters, Ann Ward of Lakeside, Mont., and Leora Hodges of Big Fork, Mont.; 11 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. A son, Warren Hill; a daughter, Marie Hill; four brothers and one sister preceded him in death.

Memorials may be sent to Interlink Foundation, Weisgerber Building, Lewiston, or the Pullman Council on Aging, SW 455 Staley Ave., Pullman.