Bob Hill Has a Way With Words
Writer / Evan Gorman
Photography Provided
Journalism wasn’t on Bob Hill’s radar as a potential career, but after writing one column, he was hooked on the industry. More than 4,000 articles later, writing remains in the blood of the longtime Courier-Journal and Louisville Times staffer.
“I was never that good at articulating what was on my mind when I was younger,” Hill says. “You don’t know what you think about something until you start writing about it. Writing is my easiest form of expression.”
Hill grew up in Sycamore, Illinois, just west of Chicago, and was a four-sport star at Sycamore High School, competing in basketball, football, baseball and track. After high school, Hill went to Rice University on a basketball scholarship, playing four years for the Owls and marrying his high school sweetheart, Janet, while getting his degree.
“My major was in basketball, with a minor in pool,” Hill jokes. “I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do.”
Hill worked a few different jobs after college but was struggling to find his niche, so he decided to take a shot at journalism.
“I knew I could write,” Hill says. “No one ever told me I could make a living out of it. I just got to thinking, ‘What do I really like to do, what am I good at?’ I never took any courses on it, but I wrote letters to 10 different newspapers, including my hometown weekly. At the time, the editor had just quit so they hired me with no experience. I was a hometown guy and they needed someone – $105 a week with no benefits. I got to be a writer and write a column right away. That was it, game over.”
Attracted to the idea of expressing what was on his mind, Hill wrote columns and served as a police reporter for the Sycamore Sun Tribune, before garnering interest from a paper in Rockford, Illinois. They offered him a job, but on one condition – he had to learn how to type.
“I couldn’t type when I was in Sycamore,” he says. “I never learned. A recruiter at the Rockford paper liked my stuff and they wanted to hire me, but I had to type. I started typing with two fingers and never changed.”
Wanting to try his hand in a bigger city, Hill sent letters to larger papers across the country, catching the interest of the Courier Journal and Louisville Times. In 1975 Hill, his wife and their two children moved into a 160-year-old farmhouse on six acres of land in Utica, Indiana, where they still reside today. Hill started as the Kentucky columnist, traveling around the state and writing about what he encountered.
“At the time it was a perfect fit,” Hill says. “I didn’t want to live in a big city. [The Courier] was one of the best papers in the country back then. I liked the area, and I knew we could live outside the city but still be close.”
Hill worked as a writer for the Times and Courier Journal for 33 years, winning numerous awards and praise along the way. He is also the author of 10 books, including “Double Jeopardy,” which details the acquittal of Mel Ignatow in the murder of his then-girlfriend, Brenda Schaefer. The book put Hill in the national spotlight, including a spot on “The Geraldo Rivera Show” to talk about the unusual case.
“Favorite isn’t the right word, but it took the most work, and was the one I was most proud of,” Hill says of the book. “I spent a year and a half on it. I wanted to do it right. There were tears in my eyes the last couple paragraphs.”
Hill retired from the Courier in 2008 after a lifetime of experiences covering different stories. Some of his fondest memories include being on-site for University of Louisville and University of Kentucky men’s basketball NCAA championship runs, chatting with Muhammad Ali, and seeing John Wayne at the Kentucky Derby. But most of all, Hill loved the challenge of writing his daily column.
“About half of the time when I went to work to write a column, I didn’t know what I was going to write about,” Hill says. “I liked the pressure of having to write a column.”
“I pick up things I wrote now and think, ‘This guy is pretty good,’” he adds. “You forget coming up with it. Sometimes I read things and say, ‘It’s close but I didn’t quite get there.’ The good thing about writing three to four times a week is if you write a bad column, you get another one soon. After a while you hit a certain level. On a scale of one to 10, I never wanted to shoot below a seven or eight, and I could do that. Every now and then you’d hit a 10.”
Despite changes to the newspaper industry since he retired, Hill still reflects on his time with the paper fondly, and even has his byline still appear occasionally.
“I caught the last golden years of the Bingham empire,” Hill says, referring to the former owners of the Courier Journal. “It was a really good paper with good people. I was so blessed to be part of that.”
Retirement hasn’t slowed Hill down much. After leaving the newspaper industry, Hill worked as a historian for the Parklands of Floyd Fork, writing about the people, places and history of the 20-mile park system. He and his wife also ran the Hidden Hill Nursery & Sculpture Garden on the property of their home, welcoming visitors to explore the grounds that featured folk art and rare plants. The couple operated the nursery for 19 years before calling it quits in the fall of 2018.
“That was another dream I’d had,” Hill says of the nursery. “I had the land already and we built the barn. I thought it would be fun to have a nursery, and have rare and unusual plants and other hard-to-find stuff. We sold art and plugged into different stuff across the country. I was a good salesman because I believed in the product. My enthusiasm for different plants would rub off on the customers. People loved coming out here.”
Since closing up the nursery, Hill has been writing a book on the life of Humana co-founder and Louisville native David Jones, who passed away in 2019. Hill has also been in the process of writing several children’s books he hopes to get published soon, while serving on the board of directors for the Waterfront Botanical Gardens, which is currently building a two-acre Japanese Garden on its grounds.
Hill, who turned 80 in November, says working with the Botanical Gardens is his way of giving back to a community that has given him much in return.
“We’ve had a good life here,” Hill says. “I want to leave something behind, so I am trying to give my knowledge of plants and art, and we’re doing that.”
Hill says the best advice he can give to aspiring journalists and other professionals is to be true to yourself in whatever you are undertaking.
“It has to be you,” he says. “Let your fingers do the talking. It helps to imitate someone early on that you like, but if it isn’t you, it isn’t going to work.”
