With health problems pushing them toward retirement, Dan and Venette Hill fretted about who would take over their parrot shelter. Finally, they found a happy solution.
In the first week of July, a Rialto couple drove to the Hills’ Westminster house and loaded three dozen “homeless” birds onto a truck. Now the Lily Sanctuary lives on in San Bernardino County.
Sadly, however, Dan Hill was not to enjoy the more carefree life he looked forward to spending with his wife. Later that same month, Hill suffered a debilitating stroke. He died Sunday, Dec. 16, at age 76.
“Dan was excited about having some freedom to do things like go on trips,” said longtime friend and Lily’s Sanctuary volunteer Laura Cowan. “The shelter was a huge responsibility.”
Hill and his wife adopted a cockatoo they named Lily in 1995. They would fall in love not only with their pet but with the entire parrot kingdom.
At the time, Venette Hill volunteered for an AIDS support group.Two patients asked if she would take in their parrots after they died – the beginnings of Lily’s Sanctuary, which became a nonprofit in 2003.
Fortunately for the Hills, Westminster’s city code does not have a limit for birds. The couple usually harbored around 50 noisy orphans in spacious cages on the first floor of their suburban home. Dan Hill built aviaries in the backyard so the parrots could enjoy fresh air.
“Amazingly, neighbors didn’t complain to the degree you might expect,” Cowan said. Worries arose when an adjacent house traded hands, but the newcomers didn’t seem to mind the occasional screech.
Domesticated parrots often find themselves in need of a home for a couple of major reasons. First, they frequently outlast their owners — cockatoos can live 70 years and macaws even beyond that.
Also, people buy them on impulse without realizing the patience and maintenance they require.
“They go into a pet store, see a pretty bird in a cage, and plop down money,” Cowan said. “They have no idea the noise a macaw can make, or how sharp their beaks are.”
Some of the birds that end up at the sanctuary have been shut in a room and neglected. “We had a few birds that never fully recovered physically or mentally, but we had an incredible success rate,” Cowan said. “The healing that happened there was just amazing.”
Dan Hill worked as a mortgage loan officer until he retired from his “day job” a decade ago.
“He had an absolute passion for his every endeavor,” Cowan said. “But his biggest passion was his birds. It was nothing for him to sit up all night with a bird that was ill, making sure it was comfortable and not alone.”
Parrot lovers call themselves “beak freaks,” said Cowan, mom to a cockatoo. “It’s a relationship like no other. Many people think parrots just mimic something they hear, but the truth is, they speak and think cognitively.”
Even after sending most of their charges off to new caregivers, the Hills still claimed 10 feathery friends – some of whom could not be adopted out due to health issues.
“It was bittersweet to see the birds leave in crates,” Cowan said. “But it also was such a relief to know that the legacy of this wonderful entity would continue.”
Hill is survived by his wife of 42 years and three children from a former marriage. Information about a memorial service, the date of which is pending, can be found at facebook.com/lilysanctuary.