Oldest veteran of WWII dies at 111

Baltimore shoe store owner drafted in 1943 waded into France after D-Day

BALTIMORE — Ezra Edward Hill Sr., a war veteran, revered Little League manager and beloved shop owner who met the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali at his Baltimore shoe store, died Oct. 4 at 111 years old.

Born Dec. 19, 1910, in East Baltimore, Hill was the oldest living World War II veteran in the United States, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs told his family, his children said. A VA spokesperson said the department could not confirm that because its historian is out of the office.

Hill was the oldest living man in the United States for whom adequate authentication of age is available, said Robert Young, director of the Gerontology Research Group Supercentenarian Research and Database Division, a widely-cited nonprofit organization that verifies and tracks the world’s supercentenarians. He also was the world’s oldest known living veteran of World War II, Young said.

Hill died in hospice at the Loch Raven VA Medical Center in Baltimore. His family said it did not know the cause of death. He was surrounded by his children in the hours before his death and visited by his pastor, the Rev. Gregory Maddox.

“He was always in good spirits, always strong and positive to the very end,” said Ezra Hill Jr., his son.

Hill was born to Alice Reid Hill, a homemaker, and James Hill, a boarding housekeeper. Hill moved to North Carolina and returned to Baltimore at age 12. After a divorce, his mother was remarried to Simon Williamson, a pastor at Faith Baptist Church in East Baltimore, where Hill became a lifelong member.

He graduated in 1931 from Frederick Douglass High School and attended what was then Morgan College. He borrowed $50 from his mother to open his own business in 1937: a shoe store that became Old Town Mall. With Avalon Shoe Store, Hill became the second Black shoe shop owner in the city, his children said.

The U.S. Army drafted 32-year-old Hill in 1943, and he became a sergeant and rifle marksman in a segregated unit of engineers. He sailed to England, and on the third day after D-Day, he found himself wading through the waters of the English Channel to land in France.

“I saw the greatest military invasion in the world,” he said in an interview in 2019.

He also guarded German prisoners of war and slipped them his candies and cigarette rations. While he was in the war zone, a 6-ton military truck mistakenly ran over him and didn’t even break any bones.

After the war, Hill returned to Baltimore and married Doris Cooper, who worked at the store, in February 1948. They had three children: Doris, Constance and Ezra Hill Jr. Doris Hill died in 1997.

The family moved in the 1950s to Forest Park in West Baltimore, where Hill lived until he turned 99 in 2010.

Hill was also a talented baseball player. He played center field for competitive leagues that held games at Druid Hill and Clifton parks in the 1930s.

As a father, Hill became a coach and then a manager for the Forest Park Little League baseball team, which Ezra Jr. and his cousins played for from ages 8 to 14.

“He was awesome,” Ezra Jr. said. “Forest Park Little League was a real cultural, good experience for boys,” Ezra Hill Jr. said.

The Hills established a good relationship with the Nation of Islam, whose members brought Malcolm X to the Avalon Shoe Store when he was visiting to speak at then-Morgan State College in the 1960s. Malcolm X told the Hills to “forget the classes and concentrate on the masses,” Doris Hill said Thursday.

“We didn’t know what that meant. Then we realized we had customers with minimum wages,” she said.

The Hills then changed their merchandise to offer more affordable prices and opened credit accounts so customers didn’t have to only pay cash. Hill also met King and Ali when they came to town.

Hill closed his shoe store in 1991 but managed his commercial and residential real estate properties in retirement. He and Doris Hill divorced in 1989 but remained close friends.

After living in Baltimore for 99 years, Hill moved in with his children in Baltimore County. The Baltimore County Department of Aging awarded him with a citation to mark his 110th birthday last year.

In addition to his former wife and two of their children, Hill is survived by four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

In addition to his daughter, he was preceded in death by four siblings: James Hill Jr., Earl Hill, Edith Hord and Willie Williamson.