Bylines

A selection of published work over the decades.

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Willie August Hoffmann (1931-2020)

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  To listen to a recording of this tribute, please press the arrow button on the left. Brian Walter · Willie August Hoffmann (1931 - 2020) Well, what are you doin’, kid? For the last several decades, that was how Willie August Hoffmann, my dear Uncle Willie, would greet me, always putting a little extra emphasis on that last word, “kid.” It was a routine that I would always look forward to renewing when I called from St. Louis to catch up with him and dear Aunt Nora Lee . Uncle Willie and I had developed our joking conversation rituals way back in the 1980s when I was a student at Reed College in Portland and my weekend ritual was to high-tail it down to the Hoffmann home on Oak Hill Road to bask in Uncle Willie’s and Aunt Nora Lee’s improbably generous hospitality. If you’ve spent much time around Willie and Nora Lee Hoffmann, then you know they are creatures of well-honed routines, and being called “kid” was a small price to pay for the privilege of becoming part of those rout...
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Alfred Paul Walter (1941-1997)

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Bronco Brothers (1991)   Some favorite memories of my dad: Tossing the football to me in the backyard of our house in Northglenn, Colorado and telling me, after every overthrown pass that sailed into the neighbors' yard, that if I could touch it, I should catch it.  Sleepwalking downstairs to my basement room at 5:15 in the morning to wake me up for 8th grade basketball practice.  In the pulpit at the Portland church, praying that the Lord would bless our hearts, but slipping on the last word and instead pleading with God to bless our flatulence (to use one of his favorite euphemisms). Flirting with my mom at the dinner table.  In the driveway of our Owosso, Michigan home in the dead cold of January, trying to get the rusted-out station wagon to start, lifting the hood with his bare, aching hands because he hadn't wanted to spend the money on a pair of gloves for himself.  Handing his wallet with a grin to one of the campers at Camp Corbett a...
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