BALTIMORE — Ezra Edward Hill Sr., a war veteran, revered Little League manager and beloved shop owner who met the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali at his Baltimore shoe store, died Oct. 4. The supercentenarian was 111.
Born Dec. 19, 1910, in East Baltimore, Hill was the oldest living World War II veteran in the United States, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs told his family, his children said. A VA spokesperson said the department could not confirm that because its historian is out of the office.
Hill was the oldest living man in the United States for whom adequate authentication of age is available, said Robert D. Young, director of the Gerontology Research Group Supercentenarian Research and Database Division, a widely cited nonprofit organization that verifies and tracks the world’s supercentenarians. He also was the world’s oldest known living veteran of World War II, Young said.
