Stephen James Hill passed away from complications of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, which was first diagnosed in 2019. He is survived by his two brothers - Jake and Eric Jon, his wife - Elinor, his two sons - David and S. Eric, and his three grandsons - Evan, Christopher, and Alex.

Looking through the condolence cards, it’s remarkable how consistent a picture of Steve they reflected. Friends, colleagues, and his dentist all remembered him as we all do – brilliant and wise, curious and personable, and a great conversationalist, but also humble, thoughtful, gentle and – the most oft repeated quality – kind. We were all blessed to have someone like Steve in our lives as brother, husband, father, Uncle, or friend. I’d be hard pressed to say exactly how Steve came by these qualities that we know him by and love him for, but I can sketch for you his journey through life – the major markers and a few throughlines.

Steve was born July 20th, 1943, in Des Moines, Iowa, to Joseph and Dorothy (Dyson) Hill. Though Steve was raised in the city, thanks to Boy Scouts, a family summer farm, his grandparents’ cabin in the Rockies, and his graduate-school years in Boulder, Colorado, he developed a life-long love of the outdoors, particularly the mountains, where he ultimately retired. His uncle Jim Dyson may be to thank for stoking his love of trains. His other two loves – practicing photography and listening to jazz - are harder to trace but when he wasn’t working, he was likely enjoying one or more of these loves.

He majored in Physics at Iowa State University in Ames, where he met Elinor. After graduation, they married and moved to Boulder, Colorado where he completed his PhD in 1971 at the University of Colorado in Astrophysics, exploring the hydrodynamic and radiative properties of pulsars. With 2-year-old David, Steve and Elinor then moved to Lansing, Michigan, where he joined the astronomy faculty at Michigan State and was soon joined by S. Eric. At Michigan State, Steve continued his observational and theoretical research and realized his love of teaching.

Soon after attaining tenure, and prompted by the recession, Steve transitioned from astrophysics in academia to geophysics in the oil industry. In 1978, he headed south and joined Conoco’s oil exploration team in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Always ready to appreciate the riches around him, Steve traded the Iowa State Fair of his youth for the Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Wichita fairs, local pow-wows, and rodeos. He expanded his love of jazz to encompass bluegrass, for which he and Elinor annually camped on the Winfield, KS fairgrounds for the National Flatpicking Championships. His love of trains and mountains broadened to embrace steam tractor pulls and the hills of Oklahoma which he explored with what started as a Sunday School group at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Ponca, and evolved over the years into the ‘family campers’ - who’d spend holiday weekends at various state parks – days of exploration and nights of laughter, conversation, and singing around the fire.

A researcher and teacher at heart, well before Steve retired from Conoco in 2002, he’d begun regularly teaching a crash course in seismology and oil exploration at Conoco’s and affiliate’s offices across the US and the globe.

His retirement freed Steve and Elinor to make a permanent home in the Colorado Rockies, which, in spite of living in Michigan and then Oklahoma, they’d never really left. During graduate school in Boulder, they’d regularly rented an old roadside mining cabin along 4th of July Rd, en rout to S. Arapaho peak. For several years later, they returned from Michigan and then Oklahoma each summer to ‘Roadside’, then to Arapaho Ranch outside of Nederland, and finally to their own ‘Hillside’ cabin on Mt. Thorodin. In 2000, they purchased a ‘Sunnyside’ vacation home in Blue Mountain Valley, between Boulder and Golden, where they settled permanently after Steve’s retirement. Hidden from the plains and city lights by a ridge of the same sandstone thrust that makes Red Rocks theater to the south and the Flat Irons to the north, the home had a view of the rail line’s eastern-most tunnel as it climbed the old Denver & Rio Grande line and was a short drive from any number of spectacular hikes that he loved sharing with friends and family – probably the source of some of our most endearing memories - and the Colorado Railroad Museum. A little further out, but still in range were jaunts with friends to Creed Summer Repertoire Theatre, Evergreen Jazz Festival, and Grand Lake. This was the ideal final home for Steve, and he loved sharing it with visiting friends and family, many of whom caught the Rockies bug and returned again and again.

Professionally, ‘retirement’ freed Steve to become more involved in the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and return to academia. First as part of a consulting group for oil companies around the globe, and then also as an adjunct professor at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Steve continued to develop and teach courses in seismic processing and ultimately co-authored a two-volume text based on the course. For the SEG, he served in a variety of roles up to the organization’s president in 2009-2010. Between his course and SEG duties, Steve, often accompanied by Elinor, got a world tour of oil-producing nations – Saudi Arabia, Norway, Finland, Indonesia, India, Taiwan, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, Nigeria, Texas …

A special commendation for his work addressing issues in the SEG’s 1998 elections couldn’t help also observing that he was “an example for all to follow”, the rare individual who follows through himself, inspires others, and ensures they get full credit, he often generated creative solutions, and “without exception” colleagues said they always enjoyed working with him again and again. Throughout his life, Steve exhibited a proclivity for clear-eyed research, logical analysis, and a commitment to following-through accordingly. This characterized his approach to any task, whether for work or school, for friends or family, or for his own health. When diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, Steve turned his skills to this new subject. He read the articles, tuned in for the presentations, logged his vitals, enrolled in studies, and, to the shock of no one who knew him, followed medical advice to the letter. Though being immuno-compromised in the COVID years eliminated or modified many activities he enjoyed, Steve continued to join family and friends on the trails he loved.

This brings us back to the end. After a period of remission, symptoms of a rare complication appeared in late January of 2024 and slowly developed through May. Family was with him in the end, and his last days were spent where I sat composing these reflections, almost a year later - in his room in Sunnyside, with a panoramic view of the valley’s sandstone crags and pines, in that brief spring of rains that give way to rainbows and painted sunsets and bring renewed green to aspen and grass where wild turkey forage and deer graze and occasionally peer in the windows. A few times a day, train whistles echo up from where the tracks cross the mouth of the valley. The day he passed, music of Bill Evans filled the house. A few weeks before, the northern lights painted the night sky over Sunnyside. I don’t know what comes after, but I can say that Steve was already in his own heaven.

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