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Cyril Dean Hill (1899-1990) moved with his family to Seattle at a young age. The Hill family settled on the north side of Queen Anne Hill. Cyril Hill attended Seattle Seminary, where he was business manager of the Cascade Yearbook. He graduated in 1917 from Seattle Seminary, and later earned a law degree from the University of Washington and an LL.M. from Harvard University.

Hill joined the U.S. Army Reserves in 1917. He served in the Reserves for 16 years, then spent 15 years on active duty with the Judge Advocate Corps. He retired from the Corps in 1955, after spending time in Washington D.C., Texas and Japan. While in Japan, Hill was an active supporter of the Japanese Free Methodist churches, helping to fund a church building in Tokyo and distributing aid packages donated by American churches in the aftermath of the Second World War. In 1955, Hill and his siblings donated the family land on Queen Anne Hill to Seattle Pacific College. A dormitory built on that land was named for the Hill family. Seattle Pacific College conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on Hill in 1955. He remained active in the Free Methodist Church in later life, corresponding with Free Methodist congregations in Tokyo and Seoul, South Korea.

A biography of Cyril Hill, "The Hill family and their era," written by Joy Hill Pound in 1993, is available in the Seattle Pacific University Library Special Collections.