Ann Marie (Hofer) Holmquist (1945 - 1990)

Born 23 Jul 1945 in Richmond, Contra Costa, California, United States

Ancestors

Died 19 Mar 1990 at age 44 in Richmond, Contra Costa, California, United States

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Biography

Ann Marie Hofer was born the 23rd of July, 1945 in Richmond, Contra Costa, California, a welcome surprise to Al William Hofer age 47 and Mary Lenora Smith age 39. ^[1] Her family included her brother, Richard Al Hofer, age 17, her sister, Kathlyn Mary Hofer, age 15, and her grandfather, Leander Smith. They lived in a three-bedroom home her father had built on the corner of Road 20 and 22nd Street in San Pablo, California. Leander died when Ann was almost seven months old.

In 1949 Al and his brother, Henry Hofacker decided to buy property in Lake County, California and go into ranching together. They purchased property on Highway 53 (later changed to Highway 29) about nine miles north of Middletown and six miles south of Lower Lake. Henry, Helen, Al, Mary, and four-year old Ann moved into an old dilapidated shack full of wide-open cracks on the east side of the highway in December of 1949. Their toilet was a privy and they had to fill five gallon buckets with water from the spring up the road and cart them down the hill since they had no running water and no electricity.

Al built the machine shed as quickly as he could, including a small bathroom with toilet and tub. They bought an air conditioner to combat the stifling summer heat and a generator to provide electricity. They lived in the machine shed for three years but the partnership ran into difficulties from the start and in the end they split the property. Henry took the property on the east side of the highway and Al took the property on the west side. Here he and Mary built a 2 bedroom home, garage, large barn and an egg business.

It was very lonely on the ranch for Ann. There were no playmates living close by so she had to entertain herself. Her beloved animals became her friends and playmates. They included her horse, Pal, Jenny the donkey, her duck, Waddles, countless cats and kittens including Mitsie, Sugar Puss, and Pumpkin who kept the mouse population down in the chicken area and barn, her sheep, Curly, and wild birds she patiently trained to eat out of her hand. She became an avid reader and journal writer. She also dabbled in poetry writing. There was no T.V. or even much radio. She made herself paper dolls and she used her imagination to invent games. She lived within her imagination. Mary taught her how to sew quite early and by the time she was in high school she spent a lot of time sewing for herself.

Ann spent many hours tagging along with her dad as he worked. From the time she was very little she helped him with the ranch chores. When she got home from school she did the afternoon egg gathering on the homemade carts with old bicycle wheels, and then hiked into the hills to find the cows and bring them back to the barn for milking. Sometimes she rode her horse, Pal. Jenny, the donkey was ornery and tried to brush a rider off on the barbed wire fencing. Ann cleaned the dirty eggs with a motorized buffer. Any eggs unacceptable for sale in the stores such as: cracks, jumbos, peewees, and thin-shelled eggs were sold on the ranch. She waited on customers when they drove into the chicken area. She also helped vaccinate the chickens for disease and trim their beaks so they didn’t peck each other to death. During the hot Lake County summers Al and Ann had to spray the chickens with a hose every twenty or thirty minutes to keep them cool or they would die. Later Al put in an automatic misting system. When temperatures got so cold that the water troughs froze they had to chip the ice from the troughs to keep the water running. Mary made sure that Ann was paid for her labors. Her hourly wage was placed in a savings account for college.

Ann spent more time with her father out on the ranch than with her mother but she had responsibilities inside too. She helped Mary draw the chickens and can and freeze the vegetables from their garden.

When they finally got a phone the 16th of June, 1961, ^[2] it was on a party line; they shared a line with Henry and Helen and later with another family down the road. When the phone rang you never knew which family it was for. Once you knew it wasn’t for you, polite etiquette required one to gently hang up and not listen in on the neighbor’s call. Sometimes when you lifted up the receiver to make a call you would find the phone was already in use by one of the other parties.

Lower Lake Elementary was a three-room school house; one room was for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades, one was for 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, and the third was for 7th and 8th grades. Each room had a little adjoining room called a cloakroom where the children hung their coats and hats on hooks and stored their lunch boxes. Each room had a steam radiator along one wall to heat it. No kindergarten was offered at Lower Lake Elementary so Ann had to wait to start school until she was six when she entered first grade. She was so advanced that the teacher had her work with the second graders thus skipping first grade. Although she was tall for her age skipping a grade caused her some difficulties since she was so much younger than her classmates, especially once she entered high school.

Ann decided to raise sheep, as a way, to earn money. The four old ewes were Beth, Queen, Nan, and one of an unknown name. She built up a fair-sized herd of sheep and sold the wool during all four years of high school. Her junior year she started working evenings at the Lower Lake Theater behind the snack bar and as an usher for $1 an hour. Her parents had to drive her in and pick her up since she didn’t get a driver’s license until her senior year of high school when she turned sixteen.

She was an excellent student who excelled academically and was active in school affairs. In 1960-1961 she was state historian for Future Homemakers of America. She got to go to St. Louis to the national convention as a California State officer. She was valedictorian at graduation. The day after graduation Bill Crittenden called Ann for their first date. They dated regularly all summer despite Al’s warnings, “You’re biggest problems are yet to come. What is going to happen when you get serious? Someone is going to get hurt & it will probably be Bill.” That summer Ann worked as a motel maid at Bob’s Resort in Clearlake Highlands; she continued her job at the theater snack bar and started cleaning the theater for $2 a night. She detested working as a maid.

Ann attended the University of California at Davis on a National Merit Scholarship and majored in microbiology. In the end she did end her relationship with Bill and found her Dad had been right; she felt horrible about hurting him. One summer job during college she worked in Fremont, California sexing newly hatched chicks for Kimber Farms, the company from which Al bought his three day old chicks. She said it was a terribly boring job. Another summer job while attending college was a beetle genetics project at the University of California at Berkeley. After Ann went away to college she returned home often for visits but she never lived at home again. She was quite independent and adventuresome.

Her junior year, 1964-1965, she spent in Göttingen, Germany in a University exchange program. She lived in a dorm; she and her roommate, Antje, got along very well. She and her American friends studied, traveled extensively through various parts of Germany, and widened their horizons. She made many new friends the best of whom was Suzanne Marks, learned to hitch hike, and to travel alone. The first month and a half she spent studying German. During a two-week break in October she hitchhiked with Sue to Nürnberg, and then München. Then Ann traveled alone by train through Bayern back to Göttingen, stopping in Augsburg, Stuttgart, and Ludwigsburg. The winter semester she took fourteen units: bacteriology, human genetics, and a course comparing German authors for German majors. The spring semester she took biochemistry and more microbiology. She studied German history on her own and attended many lectures as she tried to understand German culture and history.

She had been so isolated as a child that as an adult, travel became one of her passions. During April and May of 1965 she traveled alone to Prague, Poland and then to Vienna, Austria; Budapest, Hungary, and Yugoslavia and on to Greece with Miriam and Jan in a new little red Volkswagen. They returned through Yugoslavia and the Alps, Salzburg and on to Bonn and back to Göttingen. After finishing her finals she vacationed with Suzanne Marks’ family in Denmark, arriving there the 25th of July. She lived and traveled around Denmark until the 14th of August then she said goodbye to the Marks family and traveled to Amsterdam, Holland. From Holland it was on to London, England where she had her suitcase stolen in Victoria Station. She returned to New York City on the Aurelia arriving the 7th of September, 1965, visited with a friend for a time, and then traveled across the United States by bus for three days back to Clearlake.

After graduating from college Ann joined the Peace Corp and went to Nigeria for two years where she taught math, English, and science at a boys’ school. She developed a love of bright colors, African art, jewelry, and the Nigerian people. It was here in Nigeria that she met her future husband. He too was in the Peace Corp teaching. From Africa Ann sent her parents a letter, with some slides and the message, “I’m going to marry this man.” Al and Mary viewed the slides on their refrigerator since they didn’t have a screen, seeing their future son-in-law. They met him the day before Ann and he wed when he arrived in Lake County.

Ann and he started their marriage in Cambridge, Massachusetts where Ann went to Harvard University where she got a Master of Arts in Education from Harvard School of Education. They then returned to California where they purchased a home at 2336 Grant Ave. Richmond, California in an interracial neighborhood. There was a bullet hole through the living room window that remained there until they moved out years later. They decorated it with souvenirs and belongings from their time in Africa

Both she and her spouse had strong opinions and likes and dislikes. Choosing new carpeting, a new living room chair, the color of paint, or any other changes to their home became quite an arduous project. It was hard work finding furniture and interior decorations they both liked. Ann was the one who told Susan Kimes, “Be careful of making compromises because sometimes you end up with something neither of you like.” She learned early in their relationship to wait and keep working to find things they both liked rather than just what they were willing to live with.

She was a tall woman of 5’ 10” whose straight fine hair remained fairly blonde even as an adult. She would get permanents to add some curl to her hair. She made herself dresses from brightly colored fabric she brought from Africa and loved to wear her African jewelry. She wore lipstick but not much other make-up and had a wonderful big smile and infectious laugh. She wanted more than her mother had had. She wanted a career, to continue her education, to travel, and to experience the world. Yet she also wanted a family and to be a mother. She struggled all her adult life trying to balance her need to be an individual and an inspiring teacher of junior high and high school students with her desire to be the “perfect” mother. She earned her Master’s degree and decided to have a child rather than pursue her doctorate. Although she loved her children she always regretted not continuing her education. Education was very important to her.

Their family grew to include a daughter and son. Ann allowed her children to voice their opinions, and demands. This meant that they sometimes said some harsh things to her and their father. She believed in public education and sent her children to the neighborhood schools in Richmond. As her children became school age she volunteered in their classrooms. She believed strongly in honesty and taking responsibility for oneself and one’s actions. One time some youths from the school across the street pulled all the buds off the fuchsia in their front yard and used them to graffiti the whole sidewall of their home. She marched over to one of the boys’ homes expecting the parents to listen and make their children take responsibility and clean up their mess. When she knocked on the door a huge black man answered and was not receptive to her concerns and demands. She learned not to deal with the parents.

They sold their home and bought a larger home at 760 Mesa Way in Richmond, California. This neighborhood was interracial and a nicer neighborhood. They felt the local schools here would be better for their children.

In about 1978, at the age of thirty-two her husband noticed a black spot on her back that was removed and diagnosed as melanoma. She was treated and spent the next five years cancer free at each check-up. At her five-year check-up they discovered a lump in her breast. It was removed and found to be melanoma too; it had metastasized. After chemo and radiation therapy she continued on with her life. Later they discovered an inoperable tumor behind her heart. They didn’t know what to do. She spent several months flying to Houston, Texas for immunal therapy but this too was unsuccessful. Her husband used his research techniques and knowledge to find an experimental program testing monoclonal antibodies against cancer. Ann got into the trial and her tumor disappeared. But, the melanoma cells had made it through the brain barrier and it was discovered she had a brain tumor. She had brain surgery to remove the tumor and two weeks later was back at school teaching. She was such a strong, resilient woman.

The brain cancer returned and she underwent a second brain surgery. She had been dealing with the cancer for thirteen years and it became clear they had exhausted all possible treatments. Most of those years she worked, lived, traveled, and enjoyed her life. She so enjoyed a vacation on St. John Island in the Virgin Islands for a couple of weeks of study in the latter part of her life. Near the end of her life, when she was most ill, Mary Jane Hicks would sometimes sit with her until her husband returned from work. On a few occasions when Janie couldn’t sit, Jim Hicks sat with her. There were others who helped too. She had established a close network of friends.

Ann’s goal was to survive long enough to see her children as adults. She wanted to see who they would be as mature individuals. She came close; their daughter was eighteen and their son was sixteen when Ann died at home in Richmond, California the 19th of March 1990. ^[3] Her ashes were sprinkled on Lupine Hill and near the rock pile on the ranch that she loved in Lake County at a celebration of her life the 31st of March, 1990. The family shared their memories of this strong, intelligent, honest, and loving woman and remembered her extraordinary life. Her husband still lives in their home and travels around the world.

Sources

1. ↑ "California Birth Index, 1905-1995," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V276-7TB : 27 November 2014), Ann Marie Hofer, 23 Jul 1945; citing Contra Costa, California, United States, Department of Health Services, Vital Statistics Department, Sacramento.
2. ↑ Ann Hofer diary/journals. Ann kept diaries and journals throughout her teen years 1958-1962, as well as an entry in 1965 after her brother's death and much of the details in this document from those years are from her diary/journal entries. These documents are now in the possession of her daughter.
3. ↑ "California Death Index, 1940-1997," , FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VP8L-RXY : 26 November 2014), Ann Marie Holmquist, 19 Mar 1990; Department of Public Health Services, Sacramento.

• "United States Public Records, 1970-2009", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K188-5PM : 19 February 2020), Ann Holmquist, 1981-1991.
• "United States Social Security Death Index," , FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V3L9-SPF : 11 January 2021), A M Holmquist, Mar 1990; citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing).
• "Find A Grave Index," database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVL6-PRGP : 17 July 2020), Ann Marie Hofer Holmquist, 1990; Burial, , ; citing record ID , Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com.