FREDERICK BAYARD HOFFMANN

Sept. 2, 1941 – Aug. 21, 2016

Dear Fred, You lived a good life filled with family – Kathy and your two daughters, Joan and Anne, their spouses, Tom and Bob, and your most loved grandchildren – and many friends. We will all miss you, but know that you want no maudlin tears, so I will just share a few memories.

You are from a family of well-educated people. You attended Butler Grade School and Springfield High School in your hometown. You spent your undergraduate days in Philadelphia at Swarthmore and graduated from the University of Chicago. You then attended the University of Illinois law school. You had lifelong good friends from all of these schools. We will all miss you.

You loved your three brothers, George, Donald and John, and their families and were very proud of them all, but I will not share here the stories you told me about growing up on Park Avenue in the old Hoffmann House. Your father, George, and your mother, Ines, were both prominent lawyers and civic leaders. Your mother was the first female elected City of Springfield official – Commissioner of Finance. Your dad saved the Vachel Lindsay Home and was the driving force in creating Sangamon State University, now University of Illinois Springfield. They were gone from home a great deal, and the boys ran the house during their absence. You and your brothers ran it with joy and a great deal of fun. They will miss you.

I remember when we were in law school at the University of Illinois. We were speaking acquaintances, but not much more. You came back to Springfield to work in your parents’ law office in the Illinois Building. I came back as well and worked in a law firm in the same building and on the same floor. You practiced with the Hoffmann & Hoffmann law firm for 20 years and then with the Sorling law firm for the remainder of your career. You were a much-respected attorney.

In our younger days, we would often have lunch together, and frequently at the end of the day we would walk to your apartment in one of the old houses on Eighth Street in what is now the Lincoln Home National Park. You kept your green Corvette in the barn that is still a part of the restored neighborhood. We might tip a few, discuss the events of the day (mostly uproarious laughter over some of the odd things we had experienced), and then I would go home. On the days that I had walked to work with your father, you would give me a ride home.

You loved humor and good stories that you told well. You often were unable to finish a whole story because you would laugh so much as the story progressed.

We both found great humor in the personalities of the various Springfield lawyers of long ago, and then we became them and that made it even funnier as we laughed at ourselves.

For some time you composed and I edited letters to the State Journal newspaper about some perceived local injustice or newly discovered architectural abomination. Pseudonyms were used. We could hardly wait for the Monday morning newspaper that printed the week’s letters to the editor. You would sometimes respond to your own letter, using another pseudonym and tearing apart the letter of the prior week. I think we were the only ones to know, and it brought us uproarious laughter.

You loved the symphony and music.

You had the best collection of records and a magnificent record player and speakers that you played long before CDs or downloads to a computer existed. You had a wonderful library encased in a number of lawyer bookcases handed down in your family.

You loved photography and the wideopen beauty of the American West. In younger days, you frequently traveled to the National Parks there and brought back photographs that were some of the finest I have seen.

You also loved sports and cars and racing and opera and art and architecture and Lincoln. You were conversant in them all. If there were a major golf event within, say, 1,000 miles of home, you would take off and attend. Back home you could and often would describe every shot of the tournament.

On your office desk, you had a little metal-working hammer with a flat head and wooden handle. You told me that it had been your grandfather Hoffmann’s. He lived in Chicago and was a master ornamental iron worker. His work included the Marshall Field’s clocks as well as the iron work at the Shedd Aquarium. You were proud of him.

You met Kathy and were smitten. She was beautiful and as bright as you (really she just let you think you were her equal in that department) and loved music and opera. You were a perfect couple. You asked me to be best man and I rode with your parents to Kathy’s home in Lincoln, Nebraska, for your wedding. It was a wonderful bringing together of two wonderful people and their families. The best part, however, was that you asked me to drive your Corvette back to Springfield. What a trip that was, and all these years later, the old Corvette still sits in your driveway.

Kathy taught mathematics at Springfield High School and you practiced law. Your first home was an apartment on Vine Street, but when you started a family you moved to South Lincoln and finally to a great modern home on Pine that perfectly suited you and Kathy and your family. You and Kathy had two wonderful daughters and you were so proud of their educational success, marriages, spouses, careers and their children, your grandchildren.

You enjoyed your service on the board of the Abraham Lincoln Association and made many good friends there. You and Michael Burlingame often conversed, but it was more about Italian opera than Lincoln.

You were modest and unassuming.

You were strong and gentle. You were a gentleman. You would always help someone who was down. You were generous to many charities and good causes, but wanted no recognition. You were a good guy.

My good friend, I will miss you as will many others.

Godspeed. Richard E. Hart Richard Hart of Springfi eld is an attorney and historian. He is a member of the board of the Elijah Iles House Foundation and the board of the Abraham Lincoln Association. He is editor of For the People, the newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association, where this tribute fi rst appeared.