Lansing's Dick Hill, voice behind Jack Reacher audiobooks, dies
Lansing resident Dick Hill, whose personality was as loud as his booming voice, narrated more than 1,000 audiobooks, including a dozen Jack Reacher audiobooks and was a part of the Greater Lansing theater scene for decades.
Hill, 74, died Oct. 4, months after making a decision to forgo an aggressive form of chemotherapy, a decision he shared publicly, his daughter Jen Zeman said.
Hill's rich baritone was the voice behind more than 1,000 books, including Jack Reacher and Harry Bosch novels, and gave life to works from authors such as Dave Barry, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Dean Koontz, Pat Conroy, Nora Roberts and more.
"While few audiobook fans become authors, plenty of authors become audiobook fans - especially if they're lucky enough to get Dick Hill as their voice," Child wrote in a blurb on his website
Hill had time to make sure everyone knew he loved them, and they loved him, Zeman said.
And his last months were a blur of creativity, especially in his last act, as a painter.
One of Hill's first acting gigs was with a traveling showbased in Wisconsin, and by the early 1970s he and his first wife moved to the Lansing area where he found a place in local theater, Zeman said.
Hill and his second wife, Susie Breck, a frequent audiobook collaborator, met in the Lansing theater scene decades ago.
Hill was a great stage actor and a powerful singer who did the New York Times crossword puzzle every day in ink, said Mike Hughes, a former Lansing State Journal entertainment reporter who knew him well.
Hill earned several Lansing State Journal Thespie Awards for his theater performances, which helped lead him into his second act as an audiobook narrator, through which he earned dozens of industry awards.
He directed a version of "Annie" in the 1980s with the Lansing Civic Players, and two of the young actors who played orphans (Cristin Hubbard Miller and Susan Owen) ended up working together on Broadway for "The Phantom of the Opera."
His audiobook work began in the mid-1980s, Hughes said, through Grand Haven-based Brilliance Audio, which drew from the state's theater scene. Hill would commute to Grand Haven and eventually built a home studio where he and Breck worked.
In a Facebook post, Breck wrote about their audiobook process: She would prepare, including character lists for him, while he would sometimes read it for the first time while recording, discovering the story along with listeners.
Being in the moment of discovery was where Hill thrived, Breck said.
"He loved being irreverent and clever, could write both poetry and prose with ease, and then more and more he wanted to share his feelings about life and how to live it in the face of a terminal diagnosis. Because that what was on his mind in the moment. The Dick Hill you read and saw was the Dick Hill I lived with. He loved you all. He would often read me his posts and then some of your replies or your own posts. You were his community, his peanut gallery, his fellow travelers, his church," Breck wrote in a September Facebook post.
It was how Hill lived, taking in the moment and wanting to make sure others to do the same, Breck said.
"He had a gift, he could pick up and clue in on how this character needs to be read and played," Zeman said.
There's always something to appreciate in life, Zeman said her father believed, whether it was theater, local artists, books or raindrops filling the rain gauge outside.
"I think he'd like it if he were remembered," she said, "for giving people pause, there's always something to appreciate."
Contact Mike Ellis at mellis@lsj.com or on Twitter @MikeEllis_AIM
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Lansing thespian and Jack Reacher audiobook narrator Dick Hill dies
