‘Quick mind, high character’ highlight Hill’s 36 years at Horne Properties, Inc.
That quote came from Hill’s boss the last 36 years, Horne Properties owner Doug Horne, as her career was celebrated with a retirement reception at FDCC Thursday afternoon, July 30.
You can add toughness to her list of qualities, with Hill being a two-time breast cancer survivor.
Wearing many hats — including manager, executive assistant and accountant — as a trusted and reliable employee for more than three decades, “I was very excited and pleased with it all,” Hill said about the reception.
“It’s been a job that I have enjoyed, therefore I stayed with it through all these years,” she added. “I was so pleased to get to work with Doug and work with his company. … The people were good to work with, and most of them got along very well.
“It’s an interesting business.”
“The fact that she’s been capable enough and dependable enough to have handled so many different aspects of this business speaks volumes about her value to this organization,” said Christina G. Myer, Horne Properties, Inc. senior vice president/general counsel. “She’s never just said, ‘I don’t know.’ She always added, ‘but I’ll find out,’ and she does.”
As for the human touch, “She listens to people, cares about their problems, lives her faith and she knows how to have good clean fun,” Myer added. “…We will miss her, but no one deserves to kick up her feet after a job well done more than Sandra Hill.”
Background
Salutatorian of her Farragut High School graduating class in 1961, Hill worked at TVA for eight-and-a-half years before “having the pleasure of being home for 13 years and raising two boys” (Denton and Dustin) in Dixie Lee Junction, she said.
But when youngest son Dustin was old enough, Hill sought to re-enter the workforce — with one condition.
“I didn’t want to drive further (toward Knoxville) than Cedar Bluff,” she said.
“I saw the Horne Properties ad in the paper,” and was hired in 1984 “in the accounting department — in fact, I was the accounting department,” Hill added, as Horne Properties then was located “in the shopping center at Farragut Towne Square.
“Then from the Accounting department I managed shopping centers, managed apartments.”
About 20 years ago, “I started doing insurance for the company,” Hill, a graduate from Knoxville Business College, said.
Just prior to that, as executive assistant, “I started doing Mr. Horne’s personal business.” Those jobs carried through her final day, which was Friday, July 31.
“I’ve known Doug since high school,” she added about the prominent businessman who also owns Republic Newspapers, Inc. (parent company of farragutpress).
Having lived “in the Dixie Lee Junction area all of my life,” Hill and husband, Rick Hill, have two grandchildren.
