After 35 years of teaching and coaching, Jeff Hill celebrated his retirement with family, friends, and former students at a party given in his honor in Rochester, Illinois, Sunday, May 22, 2022.
A 1980 graduate of Tarkio High School, Jeff began his teaching career at South Nodaway High School and Savannah, Missouri, High School after his graduation from Northwest Missouri State University in 1987. In 1988, he and his wife Janet moved to Boonville, Missouri, where he continued teaching geography and psychology to middle school students while coaching wrestling. In 1993, they moved to Columbia, Missouri, where Janet was a student in the school of veterinary medicine. Jeff continued to teach in Boonville until the couple moved to Rochester, Illinois, in 1993 when their first-born son Taylor was six months old. Their second son, Drew, was born in 1995. He taught social studies in Rochester Middle School and coached freshman baseball and girls’ golf. After finishing as runner-ups in the state golf tournament in 2012 and 2013 the Lady Rockets were declared Illinois state champions in 2015.
In 2014, Jeff served as an honor guard to a World War II veteran in the Land of Lincoln Honor Flight to Washington, D.C. He accompanied eighth graders on a history field trip to the east coast for many years when school was out for the summer. Jeff was nominated by his eighth-grade social studies students and received the Golden Apple Award for teaching in 2000. Affectionately known as Homework Hill, he treasures the following poem entitled “We Are Free at Last,” written by one of his students in 2009:
W: We had only heard of rumors of Homework Hill;
E: Energetically, he entered; the room went still.
A: All through his history class, we sweated and worried;
R: Right to our assignments every day we hurried.
E: Each pair of eyes became dark and quite blurried.
F: Four thousand note cards for each unit we took.
R: Right into the night, we all read out textbooks.
E: Essays we wrote had to be thorough and great.
E: Exam information we studied as we ate.
A: As students, we’re grateful for this teacher, this “Ace”
T: Tomorrow brings no challenge for us to face.
L: Literally, as we “combat crawl” to the brass ring
A: All are reminded of Martin Luther King
S: So our summer chant is “Free at Last! Free at Last!
T: Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”
As he begins his new life as a retiree, he is honored to share one of his favorite quotes by Abraham Lincoln: “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”
