Miranda Pederson/Daily NewsBill Hildreth stands in the yard of the newly named Hildreth Adoption Center with two of his dogs, Monkey and Bailey.

Bill Hildreth got the surprise of his life a couple weeks ago when he walked into Montana Grill – thinking he was going to have a quiet dinner with his wife, Willie Mae – and saw his brother, his children and other family and friends.

&#8220I thought, ‘Are they having a family reunion here?” he said.

When he realized the gathering was a party to honor him and reveal the fact the Bowling Green- Warren County Humane Society Adoption Center was being named after him, &#8220I was totally floored,” Hildreth said. &#8220I felt humbled and honored that they would do something like that.”

And he knew his mother, who with other ladies founded the Humane Society in Bowling Green in the early 1960s, would be proud there is a local adoption center where animals are not euthanized.

&#8220Mother was always befriending homeless dogs,” Hildreth said during an interview last week. &#8220She’d bring stray dogs home and try to find out where they lived. We always had animals.”

Hildreth, 70, was born to the now late Charles H. and Laverne Hildreth in Glasgow, and grew up loving animals.

&#8220We had a little black cocker spaniel called Spooky,” he said, &#8220and one day when I was a toddler, Spooky yelped. Mother said, ‘What happened?’ I said ‘Spooky bited me and I bited him back.’ ”

Hildreth’s family, including his brother, Carroll, moved to Bowling Green when he was 3.

He attended 11th Street Elementary School and Bowling Green junior and senior high schools. After graduating in 1954, he went to the University of Kentucky, where he earned a degree in industrial administration.

After college, Hildreth owned and operated a service station for two-and-a-half years in Bowling Green.

Then, he decided he needed a change.

&#8220I didn’t feel like I was utilizing my college education,” he said. &#8220I enjoyed working on cars and meeting people, but when I was in college I worked summertimes for the Kentucky Department of Highways in Bowling Green on the road crew and in Frankfort for the right of way department.”

With his degree, Hildreth thought, he could work for the department of highways again.

Soon, he had a job as a real estate appraiser in the right of way division for the department here.

And he got his real estate broker’s license in 1962.

For three years, Hildreth worked for the highway department.

Then, &#8220I left there to go to work for appraiser Frank Newman,” he said. &#8220He was doing what I do today. He contracted with the state highway department to do appraisals on properties being affected (by) the new highways.”

Now, Hildreth says he loves his job, which he started about three years after he went to work for Newman.

As owner of Hildreth Appraisal Co., Hildreth has worked as far east and west in Kentucky as you can get, he said, but he said he’s not always met with open arms by those whose property he needs to buy.

&#8220It helps to be a good listener,” he said. &#8220This type of appraisal is called eminent domain appraisal because the state does have the right to buy the property for public good. So you don’t have a willing seller.”

But Hildreth, who also works for the Army Corps of Engineers, banks and others, has had many people eager for his help as a builder.

Decades ago, he started out building small homes off Glen Lily Road and went on to help develop Drakesborough subdivision and build several large, upscale houses in Mt. Ayr, as well as Village Green Apartments off Fairview Avenue.

Through it all, he volunteered for the Humane Society, something he’d done since he came back to Bowling Green after graduating from UK.

&#8220When I came back, my mother and brother were involved in it, then I got involved,” Hildreth said. &#8220Before I knew it, there weren’t any great lines of people volunteering to help, so I was on the board. …”

The position seemed a great fit for Hildreth, who says he has &#8220a love of animals and a concern for their welfare.”

But being on the board, of which he was president several times, wasn’t always easy.

Often, there were few volunteers.

&#8220I remember sometimes we’d have a board meeting and if there were three people there, it would be a quorum,” he said.

Hildreth persevered anyway, and as a board member for the society, he worked to secure land for the animal shelter, which was moved from its original location on Main Avenue to where it is now on Old Louisville Road in the early ’80s.

In the early years he helped with euthanasia at the shelter, &#8220and that’s really an awful hard thing to do,” he said. &#8220My heart goes out to the staff at the shelter that have to do that day-in and day-out. That really wears on you.”

Hildreth said he was thrilled when the no-kill adoption center opened a few years ago.

&#8220All animals go into the animal shelter first,” he said. &#8220Then, if they’ve been there and been checked out health-wise and from a behavioral standpoint, if they look like an adoptable animal, they’re put in the adoption center,” where they stay until they’re adopted.

Now, Hildreth has a dog and a cat from the society, as well as three other dogs.

Hildreth’s adopted dog, Monkey, goes with him nearly everywhere.

&#8220Everybody in town knows Monkey,” Willie Mae said.

The dogs are like family to the Hildreth’s, who have eight grown children between them.

From his first marriage, Hildreth is father to Cheri Watts, director of environmental health and safety at the University of Louisville; Debbie Goldberg, a Realtor in Manhattan; and Tom Hildreth, who runs a videography business in Florida.

And though Hildreth retired from the society’s board in December, he’s far from done volunteering with it.

He’ll continue to work to ensure the adoption center, which is run strictly on donations, has enough money to remain open, he said. And he’ll work to make sure the animal shelter continues to get funding form the city and county.

Willie Mae said her husband, who was Warren County PVA from ’82 to ’86, and who was president of the Home Builders Association in 1970, is a good man.

&#8220He’s actually one of the most good-natured and giving persons I guess I’ve ever known,” she said. &#8220He’s very generous with his time to people who are in need, or to people who are participating in things like the shelter, or to the clients he works with.”

Lorri Hare, executive director of the humane society, said Hildreth is a humble person who didn’t want the animal shelter to be named for him when it first opened.

But because Hildreth has done so much for the shelter, board members wanted to surprise him by giving the adoption center his name this year.

&#8220He was very proud and he doesn’t expect the thank you and the pat on the back,” Hare said. &#8220But his mother started the original humane society several years ago … and Mr. Hildreth has stayed involved every since … and has been kind of the heart and soul of the shelter. … All of the board members think that but for me personally, he’s one of the reasons I’m still here.”

Hare, who lost her dad years ago, said Hildreth has been like a father to her.

&#8220He has really mentored me in many ways,” she said. &#8220I don’t think I could have made it through without him. He’s been my rock a lot of times and I think the animals are really lucky that people like the Hildreth family stood by them when times were tough. He’s been a Godsend to all of us.”