Joan “Palmer” Hill passed away Sunday, Sept. 12, 2010.
She was born Feb. 11, 1957, in Washington, D.C. She spent four years in Cairo, Egypt, where her stepfather, Gene Milligan, a Foreign Service officer, was stationed. She attended Stanford University, George Washington University and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in communications. She worked as a reporter for The Pilot, The Sanford Herald, and news organizations in Boston and Sidney, Australia. She went to Washington, D.C., where she worked for the Child Welfare League before entering the U.S. Foreign Service as a new officer in the United States Agency in International Development (USAID). She studied Arabic, but due to illness resigned and returned to the Sandhills, where she focused on her first love — painting.
Classically trained by William Woodward at George Washington University and in France, she was a professional artist whose work was known nationally. Her style was impressionist in portrait and landscape. Undeterred by multiple sclerosis, which took away the use of her arms, she painted in her last years by holding the brush in her mouth. She exhibited her works in a number of shows and at galleries, often holding joint exhibits with her mother, Joan Milligan Hunt.
She is survived by her mother, Joan Milligan Hunt; her father, Col. John F.P. Hill; her brother, Peter Hill; her half-brother, Jack Hill; and her nephew, Treat Hill.
A memorial service will be conducted by Tom Thompson at The Awakened Heart Center, 130 North Ashe St., in Southern Pines Saturday Sept. 18, at 4 p.m.
Fry and Prickett Funeral Home is assisting the family.