Evelyn J. "Evie" Hill

The extraordinary life of 99-year-old Evelyn “Evie” Hill ended peacefully in her Scottsdale, Arizona, home on September 2, 2026. Evelyn was born on March 28, 1927, in Hammond, Indiana, to the late Leo Jansen and Lucille Minas Jensen. Evie also had a brother, the late Robert Minas Jensen. In addition to taking up piano, tap dance, ballet, and acrobatics by age 10, Evie soon worked at the family-owned Minas Department Store where, as a teenager, she assisted with inventory and holiday promotions. She delighted in dressing as a bunny to promote sales of Easter baskets. Within a few years she began accompanying her father and other department heads on annual trips to New York City to shop for wholesale items to soon appear on the shelves of the Minas store. 

Evie’s school activities included golf, team sports, hunting, and fishing. She became captivated with golf and fishing, but she also found time to edit the high school yearbook and was selected as a member of the prestigious National Honor Society. Following high school graduation, she attended Western College for Women and earned a masters’ degree from Wellesley College (Massachusetts) in 1951. That same year she took her first job as an associate professor in physical education at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Evie coached women’s golf, swimming, field hockey, basketball, and volleyball. She also met her soon-to-be husband, George R. Hill, in Tucson, and the couple married in 1956. After a year working at the University of Vermont (Burlington), Evie returned to Arizona for good in late 1951, settling in Phoenix with George. 

When the Phoenix Suns joined the NBA as an expansion team in 1967 she and George became Suns’ stockholders, and they remained minority owners into the 1980s. Evie’s loyalty never swayed as she remained an avid Suns fan for the rest of her life. The year 1962 provided a turning point as Evie immersed herself in golf and went on to serve as an excellent administrator and leader, while also sharpening her skill on the links. She served as president of the Arizona Women’s Golf Association for two terms and won the state championship four times. Evie also served on the U.S. Golf Association Senior Women’s Committee. Evie was a contributor and fund raiser for the Scottsdale Girls Club and chaired the committee that built a new clubhouse for the golfing girls of Scottsdale. As one of the founders of the Lady Bug Golf Tournament she continued to contribute to the charity for 25 years. 

For more than 60 years, Hill was a member of Paradise Valley Country Club where she won the club title nine times. In November 2003, Evil Hill achieved the ultimate recognition in state-wide golf when she was inducted into the Arizona Golf Hall of Fame. Somehow, among her athletic exploits, Ms. Hill found time for mixing socially with her many friends, enjoying the game of bridge and traveling all over the world to see the wilds of Africa and Asia, and fish the waters of Alaska, Montana, Canada, Colorado, Belize, and the Bahamian Islands. Her passion for fishing took Evie to extraordinary places in North America; she went on her last angler’s trip to Montana at age 94. 

Evie was a woman who cherished her friends and family, the latter demonstrated by how she held dear a gift from her father when Evie was only 12 years old. Leo Jensen presented her with a 20-gauge L.C. Smith Double BBL shotgun. Although Evie admitted to being a poor shot, she maintained the shotgun in mint condition for the rest of her life.