Later Life
He was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1968. In 1999, Hill was inducted into the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame located at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston, Texas.
In 2002, he was conveyed an honorary lifetime member of the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary (Civil Air Patrol) with a squadron of the CAP named in his honor—the Tex Hill Composite Squadron, of San Marcos, TX (SWR-TX-435). This squadron went on to become the third largest in the nation and in 2003 became the most decorated squadron in the nation receiving the Texas Squadron of Merit, Texas Emergency Services Squadron of the Year, Regional (SW Region of the USA) Squadron of Distinction, and National Squadron of Distinction.
Hill died at the age of ninety-two on October 11, 2007 in Terrell Hills, Texas, of congestive heart failure. More than 2,000 people attended his funeral. He was buried at nearby Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.
On November 2, 2007, the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg observed "Tex" Hill Day with speeches, patriotic music, and friends' memories of the fallen hero.
On November 2, 2008, the Air Force Heritage Flight at the Lackland Air Show in San Antonio was dedicated to Hill. It consisted of an F-22, an F-15E, an F-16C, and a P-40 like the one Hill flew with the AVG.
Read more about this topic: David Lee "Tex" Hill
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“For the soldier of time, it breathes a summer sleep,
In which his wound is good because life was.
No part of him was ever part of death.
A woman smoothes her forehead with her hand
And the soldier of time lies calm beneath that stroke.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“There are in life such confluences of circumstances that render the reproach that we are not Voltaires most inopportune.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)