GREEN: David Hill and his mother, Dolores, took a risk about 40 years ago and launched a dairy equipment business that has grown to serve farms in five states.
Dolores Hill, 86, died Oct. 23 after being diagnosed with leukemia.
According to friends and employees, David Hill and his wife, Shin, died Thursday from what investigators suspect is accidental carbon monoxide poisoning in their Green home. While officials did not disclose the victims’ names, they said the man was 57 and the woman was 69.
“I’m stunned. Just shocked,” said Don Schalmo, a developer and longtime family friend who helped the Hills move their business headquarters — Hill’s Supply — to Canal Fulton in the 1980s.
“I was just at the mother’s funeral last month, so I don’t know what will happen to the business now,” Schalmo said.
David had no children of his own, although his second wife, Shin, does, said friends and associates.
News of the couple’s deaths stunned the community.
The Summit County Sheriff’s office and Green Fire Department were called to the Hill’s upscale development — Deer Pines Estate — off of South Arlington Road about 10:25 a.m. Thursday.
Someone found the Hills unconscious inside the indoor pool area of their 5,038 square-foot home on Buck Trail. The Summit County Medical Examiner’s office said both were pronounced dead at 11:18 a.m.
Within an hour, word of their passing was spreading through the dairy community.
Dennis Hartong, Summit County’s last dairy farmer, said he spoke to Hill four days earlier about overhauling his milking line, bringing in new equipment to milk the 120 holsteins on his 550-acre farm.
“Dave had made a wonderful name for himself,” Hartong said. “You couldn’t ask for a nicer guy with a great personality.”
Friends said Hill was both generous and kind. Whenever a farmer’s barn burned, Hill would gather his employees and have something erected the same day so the farmer had some place to milk his cows.
Hill also invited his friends, including Hartong, to visit a log cabin Hill built with the help of his employees in western Pennsylvania, along with a rustic cabin the Hill family owned for decades on an island in the French River in central Ontario, Canada.
Hill’s Supply was a long shot when it opened.
David Hill was 19 and his mother was newly widowed. David’s father had been a farmer, but neither David nor his mother knew much about dairy equipment.
But, the Beacon Journal reported decades ago, the mother-son team learned quickly from local dairy farmers. By 1989, sales at Hill’s Supply topped more than $3 million.
Today, Hill’s Supply has four locations with about 50 employees serving dairy farms in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, said Ben Torsell, who manages a branch office in northwest Ohio.
Dolores Hill never retired, Torsell said. She came into the office daily until she was hospitalized a few weeks before her death.
Her obituary ran in the Beacon Journal and “Farm and Dairy,” the century-old newspaper serving farmers in Ohio and surrounding areas.
Employees — most of whom have worked for a decade or more at Hill’s Supply — were saddened by her passing, Torrsell said, but they weren’t surprised considering her age.
“But David’s death,” Torsell said, “David’s death is just shocking.”
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.