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28 | LIFE IN SOLERA | JUNE 2023 | By Sharon Waitman Willie Hill was born into a sharecropping family in 1953 in the deep south. It was not the best of times, for they were a poor family living in a segregated world. His great-grandfather, a free man, came to the states on a boat from the Caribbean and worked as a sharecropper on a plantation in Louisiana. His great-grandmother was a slave on another plantation in New Orleans. Someway, somehow, they met and were married and had 22 children. One day his great- grandfather disappeared on his way to the market, never to be seen or heard from again. Not so unusual at that time and place in history. When Willie was three, his dad abandoned the family. His Mom was pregnant. Shortly thereafter, his Mom left to try and find work, leaving the two kids with the grandparents. She returned two years later, married with a baby girl. Another son, Willie's grandfather, was born in 1895 and continued the sharecropping business. In 1917, his grandfather left sharecropping and went to work for the developing railroad, hoping to get away from the grueling work, but returned to the plantation when his dad disappeared. As a young boy, Willie went to a segregated school and worked the fields alongside his grandfather. When he died, 13-year-old Willie got his own social security card and worked on another plantation picking and processing cotton. At 16, he got a job washing dishes and working in a government employment program. By 1972, he had saved $40 and bought a ticket to Minnesota, where his uncle was going to school on a basketball scholarship. From there he went to a trade school and worked for a phone company. At 20, he worked with, dated and married his wife. They eventually moved to Seattle with their son and adopted daughter. Willie had some concerns because he was leaving friends and family, but to his surprise he found high school buddies and family who had also migrated there. He thought he had left segregation behind but trying to buy a house was a wake-up call that prejudice was everywhere in August of 1979. Subsequently, they were able to buy a home and Willie built a successful business. The family thrived, and grew when he rescued and adopted a young boy from a vicious stepfather. In 2004, Willie came to California to visit an aunt living in Solera. He was so taken with the community, the weather and the diversity that he returned in 2007 and bought a home in Solera. In 2011, he sold his Seattle home and thriving printing equipment repair service, moved to Solera and retired and never looked back. Willie knows what it's like to be poor. He knows hard physical labor. He knows what it's like to be abandoned by parents. He knows the humiliation of moving off the sidewalk for white folks. He knows what it's like to be told he can't buy a house because of the color of his skin. And yet he is a loving soul who has not let all that he has endured diminish his love of people and life. Thank you, Willie, for sharing your story and for being a part of the Solera community. THE ROAD TO SOLERA Willie Hill: From Sharecropping to Solera "He thought he had le segregation behind but trying to buy a house was a wake- up call that prejudice was everywhere in August of 1979. Subsequently, they were able to buy a home and Willie built a successful business." Willie's grandparents circa 1940