Howard Whitney Hoffman, by Anne Vedder Hoffman De Groff

This will be my first attempt to "blog" but since I have been invited to do so by my favorite daughter in law, Amy Anne Begg DeGroff, I shall attempt it.

Let's start with my father, Howard Whitney Hoffman. He was named for his paternal aunt, Nancy Hoffman who married a Whitney. She then became Nancy Hoffman Whitney ( a fact not lost these days as my sister is named Nancy Whitney Hoffman Bebb.) Howard died when I was just 6. I remember little about him.

My sister Nancy, who is nearly 3 years older than me, remembers more.  He was an alcoholic who died of perforated ulcers at a time when penicillin was not yet available to the public.  It was being saved for the servicemen during WWII.

My mother did have a cousin who was a Dr. and he pulled some strings and got some 200,000 cc's of penicillin but apparently, not in time to save Howard. I have my own musings about why Howard became an alcoholic.
After all, his mother, Lillian, was a member of the WCTU.....the Women's Christian Temperance Union who vowed never to have a drop of alcohol touch their lips.  I do not know for sure but think this movement started about the time of Prohibition,

But I digress.....the family lived at 359 West Main Street in Amsterdam, NY....across the street from historic Guy Park Manor. Railroad tracks run along side of West Main St and in front of Guy Park Manor.  There was a ball field on the grounds of the Manor.  Howard and his friends were playing ball there and younger brother Sheldon Hoffman was also there. Now, perhaps Sheldon got hungry or needed to go to the bathroom.  But as a younger sibling myself, perhaps Howard could have said : "Sheldon, who said you could play? These are my friends, not yours!"

In any event, Sheldon was running home when he was struck and killed by a rail road train and I wonder if this so bothered my father when he was older that he drank to ease the pain. I do not know.  My mother never spoke of it after his death.