Obituary
Howard Edward Hoffman 1915-2011. Howard Edward Hoffman was born in Lewiston, UT, to Edward and Lillian Andersen Hoffman on Sept. 15, 1915. Died June 20, 2011 at age 95 at his daughter's home in Idaho Falls. Married Lucile Pingree on Mar 31, 1938, in the Logan, Utah, LDS Temple. Survived by seven children: Barbara McConochie, Judy Twede, Wallace Hoffman, Kathleen Briggs, Mary Lou Staten, Doug Hoffman, John Hoffman; 28 grandchildren, 74 great-grandchildren. Preceded in death by his wife and two brothers; one brother and one sister survive him. A graduate of Utah State University, he worked as a chemist but also designed and built several of his homes. Always cheerful and hard-working, Howard was active in the LDS church where he served as a stake missionary, temple worker, and other positions. He loved gardening and farming. Very dedicated to family and country, he was involved in politics until the end. He had a keen intellect and was beloved by family and posterity. Integrity was his strongest trait and principle. Funeral services will be held on Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. at the Rosecrest First Ward, 3101 South 2300 East. Friends may visit with the family on Friday evening from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Holbrook Mortuary, 3251 South 2300 East, and at the church on Saturday morning from 9:30 to 10:40 prior to services. Interment and dedication of the grave on Saturday at 2:00 p.m. in the Ogden City Cemetery.
Grandpa Hoffman's Autobiography (Including Grandma's "comment" to President Monson)
In the 1800’s, my ancestors joined the church in Switzerland and migrated to Randolph and Logan, Utah. My great grandfather upon arriving was disappointed in the desert-like land after leaving fertile soil and the beautiful Alps but with their strong beliefs and testimonies, they stayed and were active in the church all their lives.
I was born in 1915 on a 156-acre farm in Lewiston, Utah, a small town of about a thousand people. At that time, there was no radio, TV and we had no electricity. We had to use kerosene lamps for light. I was the oldest in our family of four boys and one girl.
When I was 7 years old, we moved to California where dad worked for a couple of years as a carpenter. I was baptized there.
Dad decided that California was not a good place to raise a family so we moved back to the farm in Utah which belonged to my grandmother. He also had bought a 40-acre farm in Blackfoot, Idaho, but he lost it during the depression when he couldn’t pay the $350 yearly mortgage payment.
On our Utah farm, dad built two big hay sheds and a barn for our 32 cows. He got the logs from Island Park. We mixed cement with a little cement mixer and a wheelbarrow. It was all done by hand.
We got up at 4:30 each morning to milk the cows. We then hitched up four head of horses to do the plowing. We raised hay, barley, wheat, alfalfa seed and about 20 acres of sugar beets. Raising sugar beets was back-breaking work because we had to thin them, hoe them, irrigate them and then dig them up in the fall with a digger made of a couple of blades pulled by the horses. Then we had to top off the leaves with a large knife and pile them in piles and then pitch the beets up on a wagon. We had no machinery in those days, only a team of horses to help.
We also raised green tomatoes which were packed in ice and shipped to Chicago to be sold in the market.
We built a cellar where we would store apples, carrots, beets, turnips, etc. Most of the food would keep all winter, but when it got real cold, we would take a lantern filled with kerosene, light it and hang it from the ceiling to keep it from freezing.
I walked about a mile to school and in the winter, the temperatures would sometimes be 10-40 degrees below zero so I had to hold a handkerchief over my face to keep my nose from freezing. The chores still had to be done, so I waded through 2 feet of snow and chopped the ice out of the wooden trough with an axe to be sure the animals had water to drink.
Our first car was a 1916 Dodge. In the winter, it wouldn’t start, so dad had to start a fire under the oil pan to soften up the oil and get it started. We usually walked 1 ½ miles to church and in the winter, if the car wouldn’t start, we’d have to stay home from church. We had hard benches at church and curtains would separate the area for classrooms. We had no loud speaking system and when I passed the sacrament, I was always worried about balancing the 4 glasses of water on a plate without spilling it. I was a ward teacher in my teens which is the same as home teacher today and continued home teaching until 5 years ago.
When I was 11, we got electricity so installed lights in the barn and house. Sometimes we had to irrigate the field at night and that meant carrying a lantern around so we could see where the water was going. After 10-15 hours of irrigating, you got pretty tired.
At 12 years old, I started driving and would pull a pole behind the car to help pollinate the alfalfa. We had pigs and as many as 300 chickens and several roosters. Sometimes a weasel would get in the chicken pens at night and kill some of them. Every Sunday, we would usually have chicken for dinner so I’d have to go out and catch a chicken and chop it’s head off.
In 8th grade, I played football and baseball.
My mother was in a car accident and her kneecap was broken and she had several blessings and worked very hard to restore the use of her leg but it took about 6 months. I also remember my brother had appendicitis and the doctor didn’t do anything for 2 days because it was Saturday and his appendics burst. He had a blessing and when they did the surgery, they said something had formed surrounding that area and had kept the poisons from spreading through his body. We knew the blessing is what saved his life.
At about 13, our scoutmaster took us on a trip to Yellowstone Park. He had a flatbed truck and put benches on each side for 15 of us scouts to sit on. We put our food and packs in the middle. When we got up to 5 mile pass, the truck wasn’t strong enough to go over the hill it so the scouts had to get out and walk over the pass. In the park, we had to stay guard because the bears would eat our food. We had a good scoutmaster and he would invite the scouts over to his home and serve us a big pot of oyster soup and crackers.
In high school, I played the saxophone in the school band and I also liked to play tennis. We all played instruments and music was important in our home.
I stayed home for a year after high school to help out on the farm. Then I moved to Logan to go to college where I studied to become a chemist. After batching it for 2 years, a lady agreed to give me free room and board if I provided enough milk for her boarders. So I hauled one of our cows 30 miles to Logan and rented a barn and hauled the hay and grain down for the cow and milked her and the cow gave 20 quarts of milk a day. After the depression got worse, my landlady lost all her boarders.
I never dated girls in high school because I didn’t have the time or money. But in my third year of college, I decided I needed to meet some girls if I wanted to get married. So I prayed about it and signed up for a class in social dancing. When I saw my future wife in the circle, I knew that was the girl I was going to marry. We married just before we both graduated from which is now Utah State.
After college, there were no jobs. So I decided to go back and get my teaching certificate and we rented a house and took in boarders. Between the two quarters, I got a temporary teaching job in Paris, Idaho, to replace an instructor who had become ill with appendicitis. I taught chemistry, physics, and algebra. This was during the depression and since I was short of money and didn’t get paid until the end of two weeks, I could only afford to eat one loaf of bread every day and drink a can of tomato juice and had an apple occasionally. The lady at the hotel rented a room to me for $1 a day and when it came time to pay before going home, I only had my pay check and since there was no bank in town, she couldn't cash my $40 check so I couldn’t pay her. She told me to go home and cash it and send her the money. She trusted me and as soon as I got home, I sent her the money. In my day, people’s word was all it would take. My dad borrowed the money to build his house with just a handshake.
I worked in Salt Lake as a chemist for 26 years and built our dream home which took 6 years. I’d still get up at 4:30, work for a few hours, and then go to work and after work, I worked until 10-11:00 at night. I drew up the blueprints, did all the carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, cement work and laid the brick and my dad did the cabinets. I had no electrical tools in building our home in those days. We had 4 girls and 3 boys who helped in building our home.
We raised a garden and planted 100 fruit trees, 1,000 tomato plants, a big corn patch and other vegetables. We also had some chickens. The children helped weed and irrigate the garden and we sold some of our produce to earn extra money and my wife and kids would bottle the fruit and the vegetables. We built a cellar in the back yard to store them.
In 1966, I started working for Hercules Powder Company and became supervisor of the Minuteman lab. I was transferred to Lawrence, Kansas and worked there for 13 years and then retired. We loved the people in the branch of the church there and my wife and I were stake missisonaries. She taught high school and when applying for the job, they saw she was a Mormon and said she could not teach about her religion but when students asked about her beliefs, she went ahead and told them and as a result, two students joined the church and are active today and have children who have served missions.
After retiring, we moved back to Salt Lake in the house that we had built and I was a veil worker in the Salt Lake Temple for 10 years and did 3 sessions a day twice a week and then 2 sessions a week for 3 years but had to discontinue because I couldn’t leave my wife who had alzheimers. I was afraid she would burn the house down. My daughter and I took care of my her for several years and the last 4 months of her life, we finally had to put her in a care center.
We had an experience with President Monson at the assisted living home when he came to speak one Sunday. We stayed afterwards to shake his hand after everyone had left and my wife was in her wheel chair and he came over and said he wanted to play a piano piece for her. He went over to the piano and played a simple tune and my wife said, “Is that the best you can do?” Little did he know that he was playing for a piano teacher who taught piano for 40 years. A couple of weeks later, she passed away but that is a memorable experience that we had with the prophet one Sunday morning.
While serving as stake missionaries, we carried the card with the 13 Articles of Faith on the back and several years later, that gave me the idea of writing 13 Articles of Integrity. They are:
1. Integrity is being able to live your life with a free conscience.
2. Integrity is doing your best when your best is not required
3. Integrity is making use of every little bit of your time
4. Integrity is the energy that keeps a marriage going
5. Integrity is making your peace with every person (?) of the world you meet
6. Integrity is being strictly honest in every word and deed
7. Integrity is resisting that little derogatory remark when anger occurs
8. Integrity is greeting others with a smile when problems of the world are weighing you down
9. Integrity is being enthusiastic about the beauty of the world
10. Integrity is seeing everything that God has created with a thankful heart
11. Integrity is giving credit where credit is deserved
12. Integrity is no matter how meanial a job is, you give it your best
13. Integrity is having an attitude that is conducive to happiness in a world with many troubles
I am extremely thankful to the Lord for my life and my posterity and especially for the gospel and many times the Lord reassured me in times of trouble or need.
