Imagine, if you will, all of those animals – your pets – the good veterinarian treated for all those years and today reside along Rainbow Bridge, the gateway to Heaven.

The preacher was saying he envisioned  the bridge on the morning when Jack Hill died, and all of the dogs and cats and animals so much a  part of him.

“I couldn't hep but think of Dr. Hill crossing into Rainbow Bridge,” the Rev. Bruce Skipper would say, “and all those animals running to him.”

Jack Hill was a dog whisperer. He was a feline whisperer. Jack Hill had a way with animals.

“It’s very pleasing to have a sick animal come in,” he once would say, “and make it well.”

Jack Hill grew up in Sampson County, where his grandfather was a veterinarian, and where Jack Hill learned to care for the family’s cattle, horses, pigs, chickens,  ducks and geese.

“My father was a good animal man, and he learned a lot from his father,” Hill once would say, particularly learning to be gentle, patient and humane. “It was just a learning process.”

He headed to N.C. State University to become a veterinarian, but saw his education interrupted by Uncle Sam and  the Korean War. He earned doctorate in veterinarian medicine in 1965 from Oklahoma State University, where  he met the love of his life, who was taken by his care and concern for not only animals, but the owners who loved them.

Jack  and Helen Hill would find their way back to North Carolina, where he owned veterinarian clinics  along Yadkin Road, Hope Mills Road and finally the Grays Creek Animal Hospital on N.C. 87. He treated the animals, Helen Hill handled the office duties, and together they would raise three children.

 “He and Mom were the perfect match,” Claire Hill says about her parents. “He was outgoing, and stressed to us the importance of working hard, and said education was one thing no one could take away from you."

Samuel C. Hill IV is a radiologist in Florence. S.C. Ashley Hill is a physician of internal medicine at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center.

“We would not be in the positions we're in, if not for his support, and our Mom,” says Claire Hill, who in 2010 became Cumberland County's first female Superior Court judge.

It was a proud day for Jack and Helen Hill, when they helped Claire Hill into her judge's robe before an overflowing Cumberland County courtroom as she replaced the retiring Jack Thompson.

“This was a dream,” he would say, “we always had for her.”

Beyond his family and the animals he cared for, Jack Hill had penchant for politics and the Rotary Club of Fayetteville, and he was a past district governor for Rotary Club International. He was, and this for sure, a die-hard and yellow dog Democrat, and could tell everything you wanted to know,  and likely didn't want to know, about county, state and national politics.

“He loved life,” Claire Hill says about her father, a familiar figure about town in his Navy blue blazer,  Khaki slacks and, without fail, his signature French beret.  “He loved his family and his friends, and he was dedicated to taking care of animals. He never turned anyone away if they brought a sick animal to him.”

Dr. Jackie Vann Hill died Jan. 3.

He was 85.

“So each day they run and play until the day comes when one suddenly stops playing and looks up,” the Rainbow Bridge poem tells us. “The nose twitches. The ears are up. The eyes are staring... You have been seen, and when you and your special friend meet, you take him in your arms and hug him. He licks and kisses your face again and again … then you cross the Rainbow Bridge together, never again to be apart." 

Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at bkirby@fayobserver.com or 486-3571.