The Celebration at Fandango's In Pacific Grove

Mom & Dad

Fandango's Restaurant

Joe & Sara - A vacation with just one kid!

Is this my piece?

Dad talking to his favorite sister (Sharon) in Dallas

Is it time to dance yet?

The sisters, Marilyn and Bonnie

Joe telling a story - embellished perhaps
Karsten all partied out

Sara- just happy to be eating out and not doing dishes for six

Marshall & Marilyn

Mom and dad - still smiling after all these years!

The new guy - Karsten

In & Around Carmel

Aunt Kyla with her newest nephew

The hotel room decorated for the occassion

Downtown Carmel, perfect weather...for shopping!

Camel Beach, Pebble Beach in the background

The famous "Lone Cypress" on 17 Mile Drive

Karsten with Grammy Pat

The brothers Joe & Daren

The family

Daren & Kyla

Yes! I'm in my "happy place"

The girls
Karsten with his mommy

50 Years Ago

L to R - Mom's parents Karl & Louise Williams, Mom and Dad
Dad's parents Mary & Sidney Hoffman

Dad's sister Sharon, mom, dad and dad's brother Hank

Official 50th Anniversary photo taken in Salem

Photo by Daren

Mom & Dad at beach in Carmel

Mom & Dad with a Quilt Sara Made for Them

Joe & Sara at the Big 50 in Carmel

The Boys Congratulate Mom & Dad From Texas

Luke, Sam, Grant & Karsten

Joe’s Tribute to Mom & Dad.

Two score and 10 years ago mom and dad began a journey in Missouri that took them all across the country and even the world. That day they vowed to stay together for better and for worse. In the years that followed they got plenty of both. Mom told me once that her and dad had read Mad Magazine on their honeymoon night (no I hadn’t asked), but based on my own age I have another theory because soon after that fateful day in Missouri, in a small town in South Texas, I joined the team, and from that moment on there was never a dull moment.

My earliest memories are of picnics at Gramma Hoffman’s house in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, endless food and fun with my brother, my cousins, aunts and uncles. From the beginning it was all about family.

In Hawaii we surfed on Styrofoam surfboards, skateboarded and swam in the Pacific Ocean while my mother battled giant tropical spiders and kept the family together while dad traveled the orient each time returning with jewels for mom and treasures for us kids. We watched Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In in the evenings and if Daren hadn’t told on me and Tracy for starting a fire in our bedroom it would have been a perfect three years for us!

In Salem, Oregon Tracy and I rode banana seat sting ray bicycles from morning until night, shot slingshots & b-b guns and played basketball, football and baseball. Dad went to Vietnam and mom had the joy of raising three rambunctious boys all on her own. We listened to tapes of dad from Vietnam, sometimes interrupted by the sounds of war. But he came home - I still remember the day that he came squealing around the last corner to our house in his brand new Pontiac Lemans returning from that trip.

Tracy and I cried in the back seat of our car as we drove away from Oregon and headed to South Dakota. But once there again we made the most of it as a family. I remember many grown-up parties at the house where us kids would hang out in the basement and listen to the adults talking loud upstairs and sneaking up there to get chips and other snacks. We endured snow drifts all the way up to our second story windows and 70 degree below zero temperatures in the winter and golf ball size hail big enough to kill jack rabbits in the summer. Dad again left mom alone with us not-so-little kids for weeks at a time while he pulled duty on alert waiting for the Russians to start some trouble. With encouragement from dad us kids joined the swim team which served to keep us out of trouble as Tracy and I were discovering girls and there was a suspicious discovery of cigarettes in our bedroom that has never been fully explained to this day. Dad bought us motorcycles which was great fun--many times we cheated death on those Yamahas. Not sure what dad was thinking there. This is also where mom got her first job working for Max Factor cosmetics at the Base Exchange. I think that dad must have liked the extra money because she pretty much kept working after that.

When dad retired from the Air Force in 1977 the family returned to Oregon and I stayed in South Dakota to begin college and life on my own. Dad started a new career in real estate and after a year I showed up in Oregon again, no more snow drifts! Now it was Daren’s turn to challenge the parents. Between skate boarding and the broken knees that went with it, Daren and his parter in crime Jeff Netz showed the parents that maybe the third time was not such a charm. Not yet anyway.

Then after many years of attending but not graduating from college I joined the Army to "Be all that I could be". Mom told me that after they dropped me off at the Portland Army office she saw dad cry for the first time. Maybe the "Old man" did have a heart after all.

Then while I was in Germany I got an emergency phone call from mom and dad that Tracy had cancer again and I should come home to see if I could be a bone marrow donor for him. During the entire ordeal never once did I hear mom or dad complain about the financial or emotional stress & difficulty. I remember mom telling Tracy that she wished she could take his sickness for him and I wondered if I would do that same.

Then another one of marriage’s milestones came when Daren began dating Kyla and soon they were married. I remember Kyla playing footsie with Daren under the table at La Casa Real and Daren expressing his interest in her. Now the parents had their house to themselves.

The years pasted and the parents settled into their routines. They worked and they waited patiently for their first born son to get to his next milestone. Sure I was 40 years old, thin, single and very neat, so what? Mom told me way too often that she didn’t really care if she never had grandchildren, sniff sniff, that was ok...so why was she crying? Then at my 40^th birthday party in San Antonio Daren stood up at our restaurant on the River Walk and shocked all those present by announcing that “Joey has a girl friend”. And soon Sara joined the family and before long mom and dad had their first grandson, Luke. Followed quickly by Grant, and surprise, Owen and then Samuel and hey look, Karsten! And for a few glorious years mom and dad had four grandchildren within 15 minutes of their home. Yes it was all finally worth it. Well it was fun while it lasted.

Today with the kids all grown up mom’s only competition for dad’s attention are his running buddy Paul and a vixen named “Cricket”.

So tonight I congratulate you on fifty years of marriage and for your dedication to your marriage and your family. You have made me what I am today and there are really no words that I can say to express how blessed I feel. I wish you many more years of happy marriage together.

From Paul & Karyn Eden

First and foremost, Congratulations to Pat & Joe for reaching the 50 year milestone. Karyn and I wish we could be there to help celebrate the momentous occasion. I'm sure it will be a blast. I'm also sure that Joe will end up singing on a stage somewhere and Pat will be dancing in the background....;-)

How did they do it you might ask. Lots of caring, sharing, understanding, forgiving, and of course love. That's what most relationships are built on. Of course Pat & Joe have thrown in lots of good humor as well. I have personally witnessed all of these characteristics in both Pat & Joe over the past 25+ years that I have known them.

Joe has been my mentor, best friend, and close running partner for over 25 years and he has shared his wealth of knowledge about track & field and life in general freely without expectations. The only thing he has not given me is slack.....! He has pushed me to the limit during every workout, but I thank him for that. I am proud to call him my brother. Thank you Pat for sharing Joe with me.

We wish you the best and hope the next 50 years will be as good or better than the last. Have a great time in Monterey and we will be thinking of you.

Lots of love,

Paul & Karyn

Chris & Vivian Gigl

April 14, 2008

Dear Joe and Pat-

What an amazing accomplishment to celebrate 50 years of marriage! This is a testimony to commitment (I am guessing Pat’s especially!), as well as a determination to enjoy the good times and persevere through the hard times. As Vivian and I approach our 25^th anniversary, we can appreciate your golden anniversary achievement all the more.

I have many fond memories of our times together through the years. The laughter as well as the sorrow we have shared. Our prayer for both of you is that you are blessed with a long, healthy life together that is filled with meaning through relationship with God. That the years ahead would be lives well lived, lacking regret and filled with joy.

Happy 50^th Anniversary!

We love you- Chris, Vivian and Jake

From Dan Moore & Family

“Always right at home with the Hoffmans” – A blog by Daniel Moore

Dearest Pat and Joe:

I first met you (well, actually mostly Pat at first, with Joe usually buried in the newspaper or off running in circles – ovals actually – somewhere in town) in 1978. To be precise, during Willamette’s Senior Weekend, where high school senior prospective students visited the school, and where Tracy and I first met beside the pool table in the basement of the Kappa Sigma fraternity that would eventually make Tracy and I “brothers.” This, in turn, made me a “son” of sorts to you. It became quickly apparent to me that both of you – two unique individuals with vastly different but complementary personalities, provided firm bedrock for the Hoffman family (along with its adopted extended members such as me!). That was 30 years ago, around the time of your 20^th anniversary, back in relatively newlywed days. The saying “Newlyweds become 'oldyweds', and 'oldyweds' are the reasons that families work” rings very true in your case. For beyond measuring a marriage by its longevity, for which your 50 years together have now won you a gold medal, a marriage can be measured by the family it creates around itself. And in my humble view, it is in this category you have an even bigger gold medal already hanging around your necks. I continue to treasure the connection that I have with the wonderful family you have created around your marriage.

With much love and best wishes, Daniel Moore and family

Tribute From Clyde & Marlys

Joe and Pat's Wedding

April 23,1958

Dear Joe,

I remember a young Joe banging his tin cup on the table and asking for more gin. Mary Louise bending over the stove lighting her cigarette and giving Joe a piece of cake with ground glass in it. It was then Joe said “I’m going to marry a woman just like my mom.” Sure enough the word came in early April 1958. Come on down to Maudlin Missouri I found the girl of my dreams. We were lucky to find maudlin Missouri , how he found Pat I’ll never know. The day Joe and Pat got hitched the sun was shinning brightly as the dust swirled through the Missouri hills. Her father was standing with his shotgun, and her mother, with tears in her eyes, so happy that her daughter was finally getting married at the old age of sixteen. There was the groom, this old sophisticated, cosmopolitan, fly boy (we called him fly boy when he was young he always forgot to zip up his fly.) But I digress, Joe always told me marry them young and take away their shoes and keep them pregnant. In the case of Pat poor gal from the hills of misery she didn’t have any shoes so that wasn’t a problem. Now they’ve been married fifty years, it’s a miracle that Pat put up with Joe that long. Who knew, water to wine, Joe and Pat, fifty years? What next , a black president? A women president?

Clyde Jelinek Route 42 Station C-9

Tribute to Pat & Joe from Ralph Sharp

Dear Pat and Joe,

Happy Anniversary. If not for The Annual Missy Project Fund Raiser which I will let Joe explain, I would be there.

It's hard to believe, but Joe and I have been friends for almost 25 years, half of your 50 years of matrimony. It sounds funny even saying it. I was going to write a short anecdote or two about cooking the Cuban meal back in '94 and Pat and Joe gathering around me while I was cooking making me feel like I had my own cooking show, or how I go out of my way to get Pat to take pictures of Joe and me just to watch her try to get Joe to make a normal face - you know Joe and his 'faces', or some of the great war stories the Original Major Joe would tell us that put our little cold war stories to shame. But as one that has had great difficulty in relationships, I can't help but be in awe of what real commitment is. 50 years is a testimony to patience, tolerance, and of course love and respect. The very best of human qualities.

Here is what I've gotten out of my lightening quick 25 year encounter with the Hoffman's. I have been accepted with love and welcomed unconditionally. I have been treated as a son and a brother. I have been provided council but never judged. I have been given the great gifts of laughter and fellowship.

The riches I have received from Pat and Joe and entire Hoffman clan are immeasurable. I can't imagine what my life would have been like without the Hoffman family in it, and I'm glad I will never know.

Luke 6:43-44 says: "No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by it's own fruit."

Pat and Joe can be recognized as the Grandparents of Owen, Karsten, Sammy, Grant, and Luke, the Parents of Tracy, Darren, and Joe, and the in-laws of Kyla and Sara. They are also recognized by this self-appointed son as role models for all their wonderful fruit.

With Love and Respect,

Ralph

Invocation and Remarks from Jacob & Sharon Gigl

Dear Joe and Pat, Family and Friends,

I am honored to have been asked to offer the invocation on the special occasion of Joe and Pat’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. Fifty years ago, Sharon and I and others witnessed Joe and Pat make their vows to each other, committing the rest of their lives to each other, until death do them part. We celebrate their covenant on this special day and applaud their commitment to each other and God.

I would like to review some of the challenges they have faced and choices they have made that have brought them into this momentous occasion. This couple has fought the good fight of faith and has been a living example to their children, their family and friends of what is meant by their covenant and their vows. The past fifty years have included many of the difficulties that all marriages experience, challenging their commitment to each other and their covenant. Joe and Pat’s marriage was tested by fire through the traumatic loss of Tracy, the Vietnam war, being away from each other for extended periods of time, moving numerous times and more. The last fifty years have not been easy, but they have built their character, stamina and integrity.

Many other people would have given up but Joe and Pat did the hard work to keep their covenant. They have much to celebrate, along with their family and friends. Now let us give thanks to the Lord.

***

Dear Heavenly Father,

We pray that Joe and Pat’s marriage will continue to grow and that you will bless them in every area of their life, physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally and financially.

Most couples say to each other, “I love you.” That comes easy. Marriage says, “Prove it.” We normally don’t know about our spouse’s rough edges or blind spots when we first make that original commitment. We are thankful that Joe and Pat have been used as sandpaper, aligning themselves to be shaped and molded to fit together closely and become one flesh, which is a mystery.

The generational blessings mentioned in Deuteronomy 30:19-20 can and will be instrumental in the lives of their children and their grandchildren. We ask that Pat and Joe will continually sow good seed, which will be a testimony to their family, their friends and the world. Bless them in their sorrows and joy, in life and death. We thank you for their faithfulness to their covenant and to each other and ask that you will bless them and keep them. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Tribute From Jim Fuhs

Joe was my mentor as this dumb catcher from Oshkosh was assigned to the ‘jock” house at 412 North Murray in Madison. Since Joe was already a veteran of the college ranks on my arrival, I looked to him for guidance. The direction was at times questionable.

Some of the better things that I remember were an introduction to fine music played on a hi-fi (what's that?). Montovani, 101 Strings and many others that now appear on "easy listening" (elevator music) radio were favorites.

Fine dining included an introduction to pizza at Paisan's. Pizza had not found its entry point in Oshkosh, thus, I was unaware. Joe tried real hard to have me join him for study breaks at Paisan’s but I was usually in the men's edition of PJs and likely already in bed. I had to use the excuse that catchers worked harder than quarter milers.

Joe never talked about the lovely ladies he dated in Madison. I have never had the pleasure of meeting Pat. Air Force ROTC probably taught him how to maintain secrets. Clearly Pat must have provided the real guidance that Joe found intriguing.

May God bless you, Pat and Joe, on your continued journey through life.

Happy 50^th anniversary!

Some Stories From Ernie & Barbara Krubsack

Among the stories from K.I.Sawyer I'd like to tell this one. On a winter afternoon, Hell every afternoon was Winter, several of us neighbors were out shoveling our sidewalks and parking spaces. We looked across the street and saw Pat Hoffman shoveling hers. Being nice guys we crossed the street and helped shovel hers. When it was cleaned off someone asked if Joe was flying or on alert. "No" Pat replied, "he is on the couch sleeping." Nice going Joe you sleep while we shovel.

I remember when we arrived in Hawaii and were given temporary lodging assistance, we ended up in the same motel on Waikiki beach. Because you guys were such terrors you had the first floor and we were above you on the fourth floor. One of our first purchases was a blender from the Navy PX and a Honda motorcycle to get around as our cars would not arrive for several weeks. Happy hour started when I would drop several ice cubes from our fourth floor balcony on to the table of your patio. Loud crash, Your family would rush up and we would make daiquiris and Mai Ties. Those were the days.

Tribute from Marcia & Glen Sweet

The Hoffmans and the Sweets were part of a group of 40+ year olds in Salem that were very cool. All slim, employed, empty-nesters (mostly) and always welcome in any restaurant because our group would drop a ton of money every week. We all laughed loudly and often and spent much time loitering in the parking lots saying good night. Gosh we had fun. Those years were great. Pat Hoffman and I were working at VIP’S in 1978 when we discovered we had the same birthday AND the same towels in our bathrooms AND the same fabric in our living room furniture. Today I consider the coincidences a gift in my lifetime. I love Pat. I call her my rock because no matter the who, the what, or the when there is a familiarity and a similarity in our views that ground me. Joe was the glamorous fly boy (what is more glamorous than Top Gun?) Handsome, sophisticated…this guy knew how to make a real “Manhattan” before dinner when the rest of us thought it was a big city…And..(Pat told us this)..He was disciplined! Disciplined is a big word. That means Joe would have to maintain his weight and continue exercising and running even into his 70’s. W-e-l-l-l He does. Once Joe talked Glen into running a race in Seattle at the Husky Stadium and even provided running shoes. Glen came in third…….of course only three men were running the race. Glen said I could write this story if I added that he had two fans cheering him on in the stadium in his very first race and Joe had none….hee-hee. We have known Joe and Pat for 30 years. Through all the good times and the sad times, changing hairstyles and Wall Street cycles, The Hoffmans are still a Class Act.

HAPPY 50TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

We love you and hope the next 25 years are even better than these first 50 years.

Marcia and Glen Sweet