Ed Hill - Cape May's Forgotten Hero

The USS Nevada steams down the channel flag flying and guns firing

EDWIN J. HILL - Cape May's Forgotten Hero - Part 1

There’s a small monument dedicated to Ed Hill just off the Washington Street Mall in Cape May. As a former Cape May resident who died at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Hill was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions during the Japanese attack against the American fleet that began World War II.

Having lived in Cape May for a number of years, I frequently noticed the small plaque, and as the 50th anniversary of the date approached, considered doing a profile of the hometown hero who gave his life in one of the most epic battles of our times.

I looked up Hill’s medal citation and read about his Pearl Harbor exploits in some history books, but no one in Cape May really knew anything about him.

A search of the files of the area newspapers failed to find a single obituary for Hill, or any news story what-so-ever. The clipping files and back issues of the Atlantic City Press, Camden Courier Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and Evening Bulletin files, now at Temple University library, were all checked to no avail.

Only the Courier Post had a single index card on Hill in their archives, which noted that a news story was published on December 17, 1941, but the librarian said that their files no longer went back that far.

I called every Hill in the telephone book who lived in Cape May or near by, but none were related to or even heard of Ed Hill, who died at Pearl Harbor. No one at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post knew anything about him, and the public affairs officer at the Cape May Coast Guard base couldn’t tell me anything. Nor could anyone at the Cape May city clerk’s office, tell me who placed the monument to Hill at the Mall, so no one would forget him.

The public library of Philadelphia gave me the phone number of the Pearl Harbor Survivor’s Association (PHSA) in Orlando, Florida, but the number was no longer in service.

Then I called Donald M. Goldstein, Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Goldstein, co-authored a number of books about Pearl Harbor, including “At Dawn We Slept,” “Pearl Harbor,” “December 7, 1941” and the most recently published, “The Way It Was – Pearl Harbor – The Original Photographs,” which contains a photograph of Chief Boatswain Edwin J. Hill.

Goldstein had the number of the Vice President of the PHSA, but had misplaced it on his desk. “Where did you say you’re calling from?” he asked. “Ocean City, New Jersey. Why I used to work there at the Chatterbox restaurant and hang out at Tony Marts and Bay Shores nightclubs when I was in school,” he said.

Then Goldstein came up with the phone number of Flora Higgins, a North Jersey librarian who had the phone number of Lee Goldfarb, the VP of the PHSA. Goldstein also suggested that I talk to Joe Taussig, who lived in Washington, or Annapolis, and Donald Ross, in Washington State, both shipmates who served with Hill aboard the USS Nevada and knew him personally.

Mrs. Higgins did indeed have Goldfarb’s number, and Goldfarb had a computerized listing of all the PHSA members, including one from Ocean City, another from Sea Isle City and others from Avalon and Wildwood Crest. He also gave me the PHSA members from New Jersey who served on the Nevada, whose phone numbers I obtained from the public directory.

Goldfarb, who served on the minesweeper USS Oglala at Pearl Harbor, also suggested I call Merrill Stoffer, a PSHA Army veteran from New Jersey who is taking 53 people to Hawaii in December for the official ceremonies, and Roy Emeroy, in Hawaii, “who has more information in his computer than the Pentagon.”

If they couldn’t help me Goldfarb also gave me an 800 number at the Pentagon. I knew I was now on the right track.

Ray Emeory in Hawaii, did indeed have a lot of information in his computer. When I phoned he was outside in his yard, but he quickly switched to a telephone closer to his computer and pulled up a file on Ed Hill.

According to is files, Emeroy said Edwin J. Hill was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 4, 1894. He was married, with three children, and his wife lived in Long Beach, California.

“Seven was not his lucky number,” Emory said, and when I asked why he noted, “Well, he was 47 years old when he died a 0907 on December 7, and was given body bag number 7”

Emeroy also noted that a destroyer escort was named after him – the USS Hill – DE141, which his wife, Mrs. Catherine Hill launched at the Consolidated Steel Corporation plant in Orange, Texas on February 8, 1943. That ship has since been decommissioned.

Emeroy assured me that Captain Donald Ross, whose number he provided, could tell me more about Hill since Ross served with Hill on the Nevada, and also received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions that day, but lived to tell the story.

First I called Long Beach, California information and obtained the phone number of Mrs. Edwin Hill, but it was the wrong Mrs. Hill.

After two days of trying I finally got through to Captain Donald Ross in Port Orchid, Washington. Now 80 years old (in 1991) Ross’ Medal of Honor is the senior combat award in the service today. He has been decorated longer than any other man alive.

“Sure I knew Ed Hill very well,” Ross said. “We were both warrant officers on the Nevada. I still take flowers to Ed’s grave whenever I’m in Hawaii.”

Ross gave me the address of Hill’s daughter, Catherine, and her married name, Mrs. Roggeveen, who lives in Long Beach, California.

Mrs. Roggeveen was glad to talk about her father when I contacted her at her Long Beach home, and she was able to explain the Cape May connection and a better portrait of the man.

“He was a quite man, a career Navy man,” she said, “a man of the people. He was born in Philadelphia, one of eight children, five of whom owned summer homes in Cape May. They’re all deceased now, except for one, my uncle William Hill, who lives in North Miami, Florida.

“My father joined the Navy as a teenager when his mother died,” explained Mrs. Roggeveen, “and met my mother, his wife, who was also named Catherine, in Cork, Ireland, where she was from. They met at a party in Cork when his ship, the USS Pennsylvania was in port there during World War I. The Pennsylvania, and the Nevada, were both battleships. He was always a battleship man.”

“In the old Navy,” she explained, “Long Beach, California was the home of the fleet. Now it’s all over, but that’s where we lived for the two years at a time when he was at sea. When he had shore duty, we went back to Philly and Cape May, where many of our relatives lived. Until recently, the Hill family has always had a home in Cape May, particularly the Windsor Hotel.”

[Note: The Windsor Hotel, on Beach Drive at Congress Street, was one of the large old, clapboard hotels that was purchased by Rev. Carl MacIntyrie, and was destroyed by arson. A new condo called the Windsor is now there today.]

“I last went back to Cape May eight or ten years ago,” she said, “when they dedicated a street to my father.”

Mrs. Catherine Roggeveen is the oldest of three children born to Edwin and Catherine Hill. She has two brothers.

The final irony of her life however, is her husband, John E. Roggeveen. “I met him on a blind date near the end of the war,” she recalls. “It turns out that he was an officer on the Nevada. So he took me aboard one night for dinner and I got a chance to meet some of my father’s shipmates.”

Mrs. Roggeveen has possession of her father’s Medal of Honor, and has plans to lend it to the Long Beach public library for a display during the 50th anniversary observances.

“And I’m very glad,” she said, “that there’s a monument to his memory in Cape May, which he loved so much.”

Mrs. Roggeveen’s uncle, Edwin Hill’s youngest and last surviving brother, William Hill, now lives on 35th street in North Miami, Florida with his wife Rosalie. Now 92 years old, he is a little hard of hearing, but still feisty as he described to me his early family life.

According to William Hill there were eight children born to John J. and Ellen Hill. They lived on the corner of 23rd and Diamond streets in North Philadelphia. There were five boys and three girls – William, David, Francis, Edwin, John, Rose, Ellen and Mary.

When asked about Cape May, he said, “Our summer home was in Cape May. Some of us ended up living there, and if Eddie had a home it was Cape May. He loved Cape May and always came home to Cape May when he was on leave.”

“His registered mailing address was the Hotel Windsor, which my sister owned,” said Hill, “but Ed lived at our home just up the street from the hotel on Congress Street, the second house from the corner, going west. The house is still there.”

The Old Windsor Hotel however, was destroyed in a suspicious fire after the Hills sold it.

“My sister Rose Furey, who was married to Dr. Charles Furey, ran the hotel, and I helped her,” Hill explained, “and my aunt operated it before her. I first came to Cape May in 1911, the same time as Ed, when he was 14 years old.”

“Eddie was a family favorite, even aside from being a war hero,” relates William Hill. “Eddie liked to sail my cat boat. I had a 28 foot racing cat, which was kept down at George Roseland’s dock at Schellenger’s Landing. That’s at the end of Washington Street. We used to race with friends who had similar boats.”

“At that time,” Hill said, “Cape May was purely a seasonal resort. It went with the seasons, from the first of June to the first week of September. The town had a population of 2471 when we maintained our house on Congress Street.”

“Ed was the Navy’s number one Bos’n,” said Hill, pronouncing Boatswain, as they say it in the Navy. “Whenever they had a new ship to break in they’d put him on it to get it ship-shape. They named a destroyer after him, as well as Camp Hill, in Farragut, Idaho, a Naval Training Base.”

And they have a street named after him and a monument dedicated to him on the Washington Street Mall in Cape May.

“But no,” Hills says with a pause, “I don’t suppose many people in Cape May today know who Edwin J. Hill was or what he did.”

Continued Ed Hill Part II - click on older post below