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Roger Hill, developer and friend of youth, dies at age 68

Roger Hill

By Bill Moss, Published: March 30, 2015

Roger Allyn Hill, a real estate broker and developer who expanded Cummings Cove and was an avid supporter of youth programs in Hendersonville, died Thursday, March 26, at the Elizabeth House. He was 68.

Friends said Hill's affection for people made him a success in real estate and drove his desire to help young people.
"I met him when he came to town in 1980," said Bill Lapsley, one of a group of golfing buddies that included Tom Fazio, Dave Adams, Brian Parsons, Joe Farrar and Tim Mullinax. "He met a number of people in town and then we became very good friends. We were in Rotary Club together. We got active in the Chamber of Commerce together. He followed me. We became very close and our families became very close, and it stayed that way for 35 years."
A civil engineer, Lapsley was the link that connected Hill to his best-known business venture, the Cummings Cove golf community in Etowah.
"I was working for the owner, Maston O'Neal," he said. "Maston had made a comment to me, did I know of anybody that might be interested in buying this place? I'm going to sell it. One day we were playing golf and I said, 'You know, that guy out at Cummings Cove wants to sell,' and Roger said, 'Is that right? I'd like to meet him.' So I hooked them up together. It took them about six months and after he bought it, he expanded it. He added some more lots up on the mountain. He redesigned about six of the golf holes and I helped him with that."
Friends remembered Hill as fun-loving and generous.
"We had a group of guys that Roger and I put together, eight of us, in 1985 and we started having a fall and spring long-weekend golf trip," he said. "We traveled all over. Roger was really the leader. He got us to go to Scotland in 1996 and then to Ireland in 2002."
His face lit up by a gap-toothed boat-paddle grin, Hill had a way of setting people at ease and winning them over.
"I think that's why he did so well in the real estate business," Lapsley said. "He was just a likable guy, people would let him list their house."

Born in Rochester, Hill was raised in the small town of Churchville. After attending Tarkio College in Missouri and Roberts Wesleyan College in North Chili, N.Y., Hill started his real estate career as a broker/developer in the Churchville area before moving to Hendersonville in 1980.

An active member of local, state and national Boards of Realtors, he served as president of the Hendersonville Board of Realtors, was named Realtor of the Year in 1994 and served as a director of the North Carolina Association of Realtors. He also served on the board of Advantage West, the Committee of 100, Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy, Downtown Hendersonville Inc., UNC Asheville Foundation, the Hendersonville Rotary Club and Henderson County United Way. During his career Roger owned and managed five regional real estate offices including a building and mortgage company.

Aside from business and golf, Hill belonged to a core group of Hendersonville leaders, along with Fazio, Adams and Jeff Miller, that saw the need for youth programs starting in the 1980s. Hill helped start the Hangar teen club and was the first president of the Boys and Girls Club.

A basketball and soccer player in high school and college and a prep and college referee in Upstate New York, Hill became a huge follower of Hendersonville High School athletics.
"He had no boys but he took the Hendersonville Bearcats on as his team and went to just about every football and basketball game for years and years," Lapsley said. "Those teams knew Roger."
Hill was "just a really good guy," Miller said. "He was comfortable with people that didn't have two nickels to rub together and was just as comfortable with a billionaire. He was comfortable in his own skin and always engaging and a ton of fun. I never saw him get down. He was just a really good guy."
Weakened by a heart condition in recent years, he was done in by pancreatic cancer.
"Judy's been a rock," Miller said of his wife. "She just never has wavered. She's always been right there for him, she's been his chauffeur, she's been his best friend. She never blinked." Hill is survived, too, by daughters Sarah and Amy and a granddaughter, Alyssa.
A funeral service has been set for 11 a.m. Thursday, April 9, at First United Methodist Church with the Rev. Dan Martin officiating. Thos. Shepherd & Son Funeral Directors is in charge of arrangements.