arry J. Hill was born in Wainfleet, England in 1905. He immigrated to Alaska in 1919 where he joined his widowed mother, Sylvia. She had come to Anchorage and in 1919 married Paul Ringstad. Sylvia moved to Fairbanks in 1920, and Harry remained in Anchorage, employed by the Alaska Railroad doing various jobs until 1924. Then, he went to work for the colorful Austin E. “Cap” Lathrop as timekeeper at the Suntrana Coal Mine in Healy, traveling between the mine and its office in Anchorage.

In 1928 Harry met Elsie Edmiston, a young schoolteacher who was employed at the Healy School in Suntrana. Elsie was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1907, and her family had immigrated to Canada in 1910 and to Alaska in 1915. Harry and Elsie married and their son, Donald was born in 1929. They lived at the mine until 1932.

In 1934 Lathrop sent young entrepreneur Harry Hill to Anchorage, where he managed the 4th Avenue Building and the Empress Theater. In 1944 the coalfields again beckoned him, and he left the Lathrop organization to form a partnership with Oscar Anderson, to manage the Evan Jones Coal Mine in the Matanuska Valley. The operation was one of the two major coal producers in the valley, and its primary customer was the military establishment in Anchorage.

After Cap Lathrop’s death in 1950, Harry sold his interest in the Evan Jones Mine and rejoined the Lathrop organization. As one of the executors of Lathrop’s will, Hill became involved with all operations of the Lathrop Company. The Lathrop holdings in 1950 included five movie theaters, two radio stations and two television stations in Anchorage and Fairbanks. The TV and radio stations in Fairbanks operated under the call letters of KFAR, and the Anchorage stations operated under the KENI call letters. Shortly after Hill took over chairmanship of the Lathrop Company, a group of employees headed by Alvin Bramstedt purchased the TV and radio stations.

In the 1960s the Lathrop Company became involved in the construction of several major building projects in Anchorage. The firm constructed the RCA building in 1960 and in 1962 built the largest privately owned building in the city, the Hill Building, at the corner of 6th Avenue and G Street. Originally constructed to house the regional offices of the Federal Aviation Administration, it eventually became Anchorage’s City Hall. The same year, the company built the Alaska Mutual Savings Bank building at the corner of 5th Avenue and F Street and in 1963 it acquired the Cordova Building at 6th and Cordova. Throughout the ‘60s, the firm continued to build theaters in Anchorage and Fairbanks. In 1969 a national firm based in Florida, Wometco Enterprises, Inc., merged the Lathrop Company into their own, and Harry became Chairman of the Board of Wometco Enterprises.

Harry Hill died in 1973, and Elsie continued to live in Anchorage. Their son, Donald married and had three children: Harry, Sue and Dona. Donald died in 1992.