This month, DMMO turns the spotlight on John Hill and Fay Gish Hill, the 2023 Guild Volunteers of the Year!
The Ames Chapter Guild co-presidents are longtime DMMO ticket buyers, but not native Iowans. Fay was born in Rensselaer, Indiana, and John was born in Blacksburg, Virginia. As a child, John was exposed to classical music, but not opera. They met at Purdue University while John was studying for his PhD in nuclear physics and Fay for a degree in library science. While there, Fay saw one of the Metropolitan Opera’s traveling productions, her first exposure to classical music, but it wasn’t until after an opera-loving friend of John’s invited the couple to attend a production at the Lyric Opera in Chicago that they fell in love with the art form. They fondly recall early dates consisting of dinner at Berghoff’s then cheap seats high up in the balcony of the Lyric, where they saw the great Richard Tucker and Joan Sutherland—whose mad aria from Lucia received a 3-minute ovation! This fall, the couple returned to the Lyric to see Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, the overture from which has a special association as John’s first introduction to operatic music.
In 1975 the Hills finally made the move to Ames, Iowa, for John’s new job as an Iowa State University professor, a position he would hold until his retirement in 2014. His work took him from the TRISTAN isotope separator at the Ames Lab Research Reactor to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven in New York. Fay began a career as a high school librarian, but eventually transitioned to become a research librarian with the state of Iowa.
Fay is a long-time member of the International Questers and was the Iowa chapter president from 2007 to 2009. She has become quite knowledgeable in antique glass and has a significant collection. John has been interested in and collected minerals and fossils since he was five. He also cuts and polishes stones. They are both avid bird watchers, and John keeps a world life list. Their only child, Christina Gish Hill, is a tenured professor in anthropology at Iowa State University.
While attending a DMMO opera, the Hills met former co-presidents of the Ames Guild chapter, Linda and Bernie White, who encouraged the couple to join the Guild. Shortly after, Jaime Reyes (founder of the Ames chapter) invited them to an event, and after joining the Guild in 2008 they’ve been active ever since. John particularly enjoys giving lectures and previews on operas for the Guild, and is currently preparing a talk titled “Donizetti: Titan of Bel Canto.”
The Hills consider it a blessing to have DMMO and high quality operas so close to home. John’s favorite is Faust by Gounod, Fay’s is La Traviata by Verdi. Though they enjoy the wonderful music, costumes and sets of all of DMMO’s productions, their tastes tend to favor the more traditional and John’s hopes to see The Elixir of Love on the mainstage one day!
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