In the 1950s and ’60s, the star of Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo was Bobo, a male lowland gorilla. During that time, Walter Hill was quietly devoting his life to creatures much less celebrated than Bobo and his gorilla mate, Fifi.
While Bobo entertained kids at birthday parties thrown by the zoo, Hill was a zookeeper in Woodland Park’s aviary.
An Everett High School graduate, Hill spent 30 years as a zookeeper, first on the East Coast, then at Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, and finally at Woodland Park, where he was head of the aviary before his retirement, said his niece, Linda Senter of Everett.
Walter Jacob Hill died Sept. 2 at the Washington Soldiers Home in Orting. He was 92.
He was preceded in death by his wife, Lucinda; parents Jacob and Sanna Liisa “Lizzie” Hill; stepfather John Saarie; brothers Harvey Hill and Robert Saarie; and sisters Irene Shipton and Betty Johnson. He is survived by sister Ellen Carlson and many other relatives and friends.
“Everyone who knew Walter appreciated his quiet, friendly manner, ready smile and playful sense of humor,” said another niece, Barbara Johnson Berg of Aurora, Ore. “He had a good heart and, of course, a very special love for all creatures, great and small.”
Hill and his wife never had children. “He was nice to all of us nieces,” Senter said. “He’d bring us gifts and was always attentive.”
Senter recalled that after his retirement, her Uncle Walter would take her children to the Seattle zoo. “He’d give them behind-the-scenes tours and let them hold baby animals and birds. It was a real treat,” she said.
In his long life, Hill served in the U.S. Army, earned a degree in zoology and tried his hand at prospecting for gold in Alaska before settling down in Seattle, Senter said.
Gigi Allianic, public relations manager at Woodland Park Zoo, said Hill was the keeper of the aviary, but there are no records of the exact years he worked.
“During his time here, the zoo was part of the city of Seattle,” Allianic said, adding that today it’s managed by the nonprofit Woodland Park Zoological Society.
Hill was born Dec. 16, 1912, in Clinton on Whidbey Island. His parents had come from Finland to Whidbey, where many Finns worked in logging.
After his father’s death from the flu outbreak in 1919, his mother moved the family to Everett and later to Swans Trail, between Everett and Snohomish.
Relatives traced Hill’s career and travels through letters he wrote to his mother and to his sister, Betty Hill Johnson.
After graduation from Everett High, Hill joined the Army in 1936 and served in the Medical Corps. That duty took him to Hawaii and California. From 1939 until 1941, he was at Washington State University in Pullman, studying biology, physiology, geology and mining engineering. He was called back into the Army in 1941 and was honorably discharged as a first lieutenant at the end of World War II in 1945. He later finished his degree in zoology at the University of Washington.
From 1946 through 1949, while completing his schooling, he spent summers in Alaska working as an assistant foreman for a water system. Hill said in letters back home that he prospected for gold while doing hydraulic fossil mining.
In the late 1990s, relatives took Hill on a tour of Woodland Park Zoo, which had changed since his tenure there. Senter said her uncle enjoyed the day, despite a flat tire on his wheelchair.
“He was quiet, with a shy smile, but he could surprise us with his sense of humor,” said Senter, who remembers her uncle as an avid hiker, fisherman and reader.
“He was quiet, but he loved to talk about his animals. He loved the birds in the aviary,” said Paul Johnson of Mercer Island, whose brother was married to Hill’s sister, Betty. “He liked to look at the local natural habitat and enjoyed watching the habits of birds.
“Wherever he went, birds were on his mind,” Johnson said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
