Lawrence Warne Jill Jr.

Lawrence Warne Hill Jr.
March 16, 1953 – October 8, 2025

Born in Wyandotte County, Kansas | Raised in Kansas City, Missouri

Some people just belong to a place the way roots belong to soil. That was Lawrence with Kansas City. Born to Doris Jean Jones and Lawrence Warne Hill Sr., he spent 72 beautiful years walking this earth before transitioning to the upper room on October 8, 2025. He didn’t just live in Kansas City, Missouri—he loved it with the kind of devotion usually reserved for championship teams and homemade barbecue. And if you knew Lawrence, you knew those devotions often overlapped.
He was a man who understood that life’s greatest treasures don’t come wrapped in fancy paper.

They come in the tug of a fishing line at dawn, when the world is still quiet and the fish are allegedly biting (though Lawrence might’ve embellished his catch stories just a touch—but that’s what made them perfect). They come in the roar of a stadium during football season, when hope springs eternal and your team is definitely going all the way this year. They come in the shuffle of cards around a kitchen table, where the real game isn’t about winning—it’s about the trash talk, the laughter, and someone inevitably accusing someone else of cheating.

But most of all, Lawrence knew that life’s greatest treasure was family. Not the hallmark-card version, but the real, messy, beautiful, loud, complicated, utterly irreplaceable version. The version where everyone gathers together, where stories get told and retold until nobody remembers which parts are true, where kids run wild and food appears in endless waves, and where you feel—deep in your bones—that you are exactly where you belong.

Lawrence leaves behind a legacy that can’t be measured in years, but in the lives he touched and the love he gave so freely:

His son, Lawrence Warne Hill III, who carries not just his name but his spirit forward—
His daughter, Demetria Elaine Cisco-Caldwell, and son-in-law, Laron A. Caldwell, who gave him the gift of an expanded heart—
Three granddaughters who lit up his world: Rae’Vyn, Ty’Rah, and Brielle—each one a reminder that the best things in life come in packages of pure joy and occasional chao and four great-grandchildren—Felicity, Juliannah, Meliodas, and Aurora—whose very existence proved that love doesn’t divide as it multiplies; it grows exponentially, impossibly, miraculously bigger.

They say you can’t take it with you, and that’s true. But here’s what Lawrence left behind: memories of sunrise fishing trips, the sound of his voice cheering for his team, the snap of cards on a table, and the warmth of his presence at every family gathering. He left behind his love for Kansas City a city that shaped him and that he, in turn, shaped through the way he loved its people.
He left behind laughter. So much laughter.
And he left behind the certainty, for everyone who knew him, that they were loved. Deeply. Completely. Without reservation.

So here’s to Lawrence Warne Hill Jr.—a fisherman, a football fan, a card shark (self-proclaimed), a Kansas City native through and through, and above all, a family man. May his memory be a blessing, may his fishing stories continue to grow in the retelling, and may we all be so lucky to love and be loved the way he did.
Gone fishing. Forever in our hearts.