William W. Hoke

Schwenksville, Pa.

 

 

 

 

 

Bill, his wife, Natasha, and their cat live in suburban Philadelphia. He has three children, one stepchild, and six grandchildren. He worked in industrial sales and is semi retired. Natasha is a retired office manager. Bill does volunteer work for “SCORE” which is the Service Corps of Retired Executives. They provide free counseling for people who are considering starting their own business. His hobbies are trout fishing, reading, and playing with his ’62 Chevy convertible which he bought new.

 

 His proudest accomplishment is, “Having my three kids turn out to be good decent human beings.”

 

His message to his classmates is, “I’ve been lucky. I was lucky to grow up in a small town with real people where I had some really great times, and I was lucky to attend a high school which had some fine teachers. In a typical week, Mary Menges taught me more about English grammar than I learned during two semesters of English at Penn State. I’ve also been lucky in love. In 1960, I married a wonderful gal named Myla. We had three children. I worked, she raised the kids, and she did a superb job. They are all successful, but more important, they all turned out to be good, decent human beings. Each of our two sons is president of his own small industrial company which he started from scratch. Our daughter graduated from Princeton in 1984, and accepted a position with AT&T in their fast-track management program. In 1998, she became the second youngest female vice president in the history of AT&T. She has three kids so she is a very busy young woman. In early 1999, Myla lost a two-year battle with cancer. A few years later, I married a dark-eyed lady named Natasha whom I met in 1975 when I was in Moscow on business. In addition to my three kids and six grandchildren, I now have a beautiful stepdaughter who is an attorney in Moscow. I guess we’ve all had to face some difficult times in our lives, but on an overall basis, I consider myself to be a very lucky guy.”

 

Bill served in the Army as a basic infantry training officer at Ft. Benning, GA, and Ft. Dix, NJ. He has a BS in Marketing from Penn State, and Natasha has a BA in English from Moscow State University.