Friends from Mahtomedi High School remember Jim Hill, as family struggles to bring remains home from Ukraine

“There’s Jimmy, there’s Jimmy right there,” said Gary Hogle, pointing to a photo. “He was a really nice guy and real quiet.” 

Photographs and memories from the inside of his Mahtomedi High School yearbook, “Zephyr ’73” written brightly on the outside.  

“He was one of the good guys. Trustworthy. We mostly talked next to our lockers,” he recalled. “Jim was always on my left side, and Mark Howell on my right side. Three straight years.”

Hill’s nickname was “Nimbo,” as nimble as an athlete, his sister Katya said. 

“He was a real ball handler. He had some moves that I had never seen before,” said Paul Anderson, who played varsity basketball with Hill for two years. “He could pass it off to you, and you never saw it coming until boom! It’s right there in your hands, and you say, ‘Where did this come from?'”

In the yearbook photos, you can see Hill wearing #25 on his basketball and football team uniforms. 

“He was a quiet and unassuming kind of guy,” Anderson remembered. “But at the same time, he was always there to tell a joke. He always enjoyed getting a laugh. I don’t know a single person who wouldn’t have liked him.” 

Hill’s classmates said there was a generosity of spirit and a willingness to help even then. 

Hogle recalled a specific incident from the fall of 1972 that has stayed with him all these years later.  

“I ran out of gas. Jim happened to catch me, right, you know, going to school, trying to call my father,” he said. “And he said well, we’ll find gas for you. Apparently, the last thing I know, he was out trying to find gas for me … That was the last I saw of him until my father got me some gas,” he added with a laugh. 

Friends and family say after high school, Hill traveled far and wide over the years. 

With a degree in social work, he specialized in forensic psychology and lectured in Poland and Ukraine, where on March 17, the unthinkable happened. 

“It just sent a shock wave through the Mahtomedi High School alumni, people who knew him,” Anderson said. 

Katya Hill said her brother was walking on a street in Chernihiv, Ukraine when a bomb went off. 

The blast took Hill’s life and left a friend who was with him deaf in one ear. 

For Hogle, the news was devastating. 

“I was angry,” he said. “I have said this to a couple of people, [and] I don’t know if I’m angrier or sadder.”

“It’s just disbelief, and then there’s finally recognition, the realization that yeah, this did happen,” Anderson said, adding, “this is our friend, this is our classmate.” 

Hill, who was 67, had been caring for his longtime partner Ira, a Ukrainian woman who was being treated at a regional hospital for late-stage multiple sclerosis and pneumonia. 

“It was Jimmy who actually arranged to get her to this hospital, and get her the doctor, get her the medication,” Hogle declared. “He’s the reason she’s still alive.” 

“What he was doing over there, and how he was helping his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s mother,” that’s Jim,” Anderson said. “No need to doubt that it’s him. That’s the kind of guy he was.” 

In the days before Hill’s death, he reported on social media about the bombings outside the hospital, the lack of heat, and short supply of food. 

Friends say he searched for food and water for others, including the medical staff. 

“He had his pockets filled with chocolates, and he was giving them out to people, in despair and really having trouble,” Anderson said. 

But the trouble didn’t stay away long. 

“He’d report it’s been quiet all night long, and all of a sudden we hear bombing here, and they’re telling us to go into the basement,” Hogle said. “But Ira’s too sick to go into the basement. It’s too cold. So he stayed with her.”

Katya Hill said Ira is now with her family in eastern Ukraine, and she hopes to be able to help get her out of the country. 

Meanwhile, she said her brother’s remains are now cremated at a funeral home in Kyiv. 

The hope is that his ashes can be returned to the United States.  

“For something like that to happen on the world stage, to a guy I went to high school with, that I played basketball with, it’s a shock,” Anderson said. “Brings it home.”

Katya Hill said several private individuals, including the funeral home director, are offering to try to transport the ashes to Poland or somewhere on the Ukrainian border. 

She says all of this is very tentative right now. 

Before he passed, Hill told family and friends he wanted to establish European-style hostels places for Ukrainian refugees to live on properties he owned in Idaho and Montana. 

Katya Hill says her family wants to follow through with those plans as a kind of legacy to her brother. 

“Basically set up whatever kind of accommodation for as many people they can put there,” Hogle explains. 

Hogle said Hill “just worked to try to do the best he could to help Ira and help other people. He loved the people in Ukraine. He was a good guy.” 

The family has set up a GoFundMe to help bring Hill’s remains back to the United States, provide medical and essential support for Ira, and provide aid for Ukrainian refugees. 

You can find that link here.