Remembering John Hill

Every so often we’re hit with the news of someone passing that makes us stop in our tracks. It’s often a musician or an actor that bring back good memories of another time. There’s a moment of reflection, maybe a tear is shed, and then the moment is gone.

Then there’s news of someone passing that hits you on a much more personal level, where you need more than a moment; you start to add up the many parts the person played in a lifetime—as a friend, mentor, and above all, a towering intellectual figure, a legend, whose input and passion helped shape careers and an industry.

When we received the news of the passing of John Hill last month, the materials handling industry stopped, took a collective seat and began to reflect and write down the many ways John had positively influenced how we go about our day-to-day business as well as our lives.

Two people who had the honor of having their careers shaped by John’s influence are Bob Trebilcock and Gary Forger. As readers are aware, Bob retired last month after being “the face” of Modern for more than 30 years. Gary served as chief editor of Modern for just under 10 years, then worked at MHI for nine years and is now one of Modern’s top contributing editors.

“Way back in 1998, the editor of Modern at the time asked me to write a series of four articles on warehouse management software,” Bob says. “Back then, I was challenged to spell WMS, but he said not to worry. He’d arranged for me to talk to John Hill, who would be my guide for the stories.” That initial call with John was the start of an uninterrupted conversation between the two for the next 26 years.

“I can remember any number of times I called John driving home from a conference to share what I’d just learned and to ask him for context,” says Bob. “Those calls continued right up until the Friday before this year’s Modex, when John called me out of the blue and we spent an hour catching up. His impact on my career as a teacher, mentor, friend and father figure was profound.”

According to Gary, one of the most important roles John played was being present and connecting people and ideas. “John was not omniscient, but he did seem to be omnipresent almost forever,” Gary says. “He understood and openly promoted the connection of people to make possible the technology interconnections as they developed.”

Along the way, those interconnections placed him at the forefront of the AIDC industry, including industrial bar coding and RFID, as well as the WMS industry where he held a leadership position at one of the first—if not the first—warehouse management software companies.

“John was from Exeter and Princeton in another era,” says Gary. “Today he would be considered a serial founder. However, he may have never used the word to describe himself. But he was. In a time when everyone worked hard, John worked harder.”

And of course, on top of his overwhelming list of achievements, we’ll never forget John’s style. “At one MHI meeting on a late spring afternoon in Charlotte, the fire alarm went off in the Hilton. Everyone evacuated,” Gary adds. “However, John was the only one who walked out to the sidewalk with a glass of chardonnay in his hand. Style. Timing. And maybe a little luck. He wore all three very well.”