Joan Palmer Hill

Joan 'Palmer' Hill passed away on September 12, 2010. She was born in Washington DC on February 11, 1957. She spent four years in Cairo, Egypt, where her step father Gene Milligan, a Foreign Service officer was stationed. She attended Stanford University, George Washington University and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Communications. She worked as a reporter for the Southern Pines Pilot, the Sanford Herald, and news organizations in Boston and Sidney, Australia. She went to Washington where she worked for the Child Welfare League before entering the US Foreign Service as a new officer in the United States Agency in International Development (USAID). She studied Arabic but due to illness resigned and returned to the Sandhills where she focused on her first love painting.
Classically trained by William Woodward at George Washington University and in France, she was a professional artist whose work was known nationally. Her style was impressionist in portrait and landscape. Undeterred by multiple sclerosis, which took away the use of her arms, she painted in her last years by holding the brush in her mouth. She exhibited her works in a number of shows and at galleries, often holding joint exhibits with her mother, Joan Milligan Hunt.

She is survived by her mother, Joan Milligan Hunt, her father Colonel John F.P. Hill, her brother Peter Hill, her half-brother Jack Hill, and her nephew, Treat Hill.

A memorial service will be conducted by Tom Thompson at The Penick Village Auditorium in the North Building in Southern Pines on Saturday September 18, 2010 at 4:30 p.m.
Fry and Prickett Funeral Home is assisting the Hill family.
Condolences: www.PinesFunerals.com