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Bennie Hill
November 19, 1938 - March 1, 2018
Bennie Charles Hill passed away Thursday, March 1, 2018 at his home in Borger.
He was born November 19, 1938 in Borger to Frank Benjamin and Marcella Elizabeth (Haley) Hill. He was self employed as a welder.
He was preceded in death by his parents.
His survivors include: a son, Damon Charles Hill of Borger; a daughter, Kim Kelly McWilliams and husband Howard of Borger; a brother, Franky Hill and wife Charlotte of Borger; 2 step-sisters: Cora Moss and wife Kyle of Borger and Sarah Armstrong of Denton, Texas; his step-father, Roy Stewart; 3 grandchilren: Curtis Greene of Canadian, Texas; Jeremiah Greene and wife Capree of Decatur, Texas and Dustin Hill of Borger; 5 great grandchildren: Jedidiah Greene, Solomon Greene, Katelyn McWilliams, Makenzie McWilliams and Ryleigh Hill.
Graveside services will be held Monday, March 5, 2018 at 11:00 AM at Highland Park Cemetery, Borger.
(Published by Brown Funeral Directors, Thursday, March 1, 2018)
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Lester Dan Langley
There was nothing about him that was ambivalent, in any sense of that word. I got to see him twice a year in the gathering at Possum Kingdom or at a BHS Class of '58 reunion. He was a character study. He could have reprised the role of Walter Matthau in "Charley Varrick" or "Plaza Suite" or "The Odd Couple." I had in mind once or twice following him around at a garage sale, where he excelled, then writing a short piece about it. His self-adulation in a short bio for one of the class reunions is a classic. Anyone who did not know him and read it would conclude that the guy must be self-absorbed and insensitive, but he wasn't. I found in him what I feel most strongly about our class––people I got to know after we left high school and saw from a distance, people who brought back memories of a day when values and beliefs and character mattered and a time that contrasts with nowadays, where either anything goes and nothing matters or nothing goes and everything matters, and people who want to fit in but refuse to be fitted in. The last definition fitted Bennie to the proverbial "T."
Larry Foster
It could not have been said Better
Jimmie Darrell Brown
Bennie Hill was a very special, quality person and friend. He was a no non-sense straight forward friend to me for more than 60 years. Always smiling and having a good time.
He will be missed by many who were privileged to call him "my friend".
Samuel (Bob) West
Seems like yesterday when I started school in the first grade at Weatherly Elementry. I met Bennie Hill.
We spent a lot of hours in the alley in back of my house throwing a baseball back and forth. How can you ever express how you feel losing a friend of over seventy years.
Bennie was a very good athlete . One of my fondest memories was of a football game in El Paso, Texas.
I got in front of Bennie and threw a block that cut him loose for eighty plus yards and a touchdown. What a thrill.
Bennie was as indepentent a cuss as I ever knew and I loved him for it. He never backed down. He stood by his friends.He was a mans man.
He lived a good life although a hard one,and will be missed by his friends and family, but not forgotten. He was one of many strong characters in the class of 58 that made that class unique in the history of Borger High.
I really hope when we cross over that we all meet and throw one humongus holihan.
Don't the rest of you die until after the reunion, I want to see you all and say some proper goodbyes.
Lester Dan Langley
You're right. He was our class's variation of Donald Trump, the kind of person whose erratic behavior and even non-sensical language are really tactical maneuvers in a world that can be unpredictable and chaotic. You can't pigeonhole the type. They are a sociologist's nightmare, unclassifiable under any of the identifiable social science theories. Can you imagine Bennie in Judge Judy's court? Better than most of the PhD's I've known, he understood that the "system" was screwed up but there was no point in trying to overthrow it and reforms may or may not work. Just learn how to survive in it and don't let it "atomize" you. And if Trump manages to pull it off when he meets with Kim Il Un, give the guy the Nobel Prize. The selection committee and a billion people may choke on the decision, but, as Bennie would say, "let 'em."
Lester Dan Langley
Dear Bennie, You always kept one ear to the ground and the other tuned to whatever cosmic vibration struck the other, so on the anniversary of your departure from this earth I thought I would let you know how things are going. I did get an invitation from Legacy.com to add another comment about you in its Guest Book, but our classmates probably wouldn't see it. Bennie, you are needed back home. From the President on down to the withering numbers of the Class of '58, your down-to-earth and no-nonsense wisdom is missed. When you were around, no one experienced an identity crisis nor did we get "relative to what" as the answer to every question. My golf game has gone south, and I don't have you to console me. I miss our poker club where I could always count on your playing the same game when it was your deal. Although you never told me directly, I sensed that you subscribed to the notion that intellectuals and liberals profess a priority to ideas and to the poor and dispossessed, respectively, but in reality care more about ideology than ideas and think of the poor and aggrieved less as people than abstractions. As a professing intellectual and liberal who spent 35 years in higher education, I sometimes came to a similar conclusion but kept pressing on in the hope that such did not have to be the case.