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TRIBUTE
Jacqueline Hoefer 1923-2006 July 11, 2006
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By Robert Commanday
Jacqueline Hoefer was a special person and remains so in memory for the countless people she touched in her 83 years. The "Poet of Lyon Street" served the arts in every way she could. She was one of those rare patrons who give with their keen intellects as well as their resources. For her, membership on boards — Jacque (pronounced Jacquie) sat on at least six — meant attendance and participation. At the board table of San Francisco Classical Voice for the past eight years, her voice, gentle and soft by nature but rendered lighter by the ravages of multiple sclerosis, was always there. She could be counted on for insightful comments and observations and ideas that hadn't occurred to any even in that exceptionally bright group.
Jacque Hoefer died last Thursday at the University of California Medical Center, leaving no survivors but lasting memories of a beautiful person, and a legacy of informed generosity at the San Francisco Symphony, Fine Arts Museums, Conservatory of Music, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival (she had a second home in Santa Fe), and SFCV. Born in Columbia, Illinois, she attended Northwestern University, was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Illinois, and received a Ph D. in American literature from Washington University, St. Louis.
Her exceptional intelligence, honed by her education, had to have played an important role in the development of Hoefer Scientific Instruments (instruments for biochemical research), which she created with her late husband, Peter Hoefer. In 1985, they permanently endowed the Jacqueline and Peter Hoefer Associate Principal Bassoon Chair at the San Francisco Symphony. After Peter Hoefer died in 1987, Jacque served as the company's chief executive officer until its purchase in 1995 by Pharmacia Biotech AB (it is now a subsidiary of Harvard Bioscience). She also taught courses in English literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and at San Francisco State University.
Her poetry can be found in her books, Imagining the Garden (1981) and Night in a White Wood. There is also a trio of poems, Weather Songs, set to music by Lanham Deal. She wrote critical essays on Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Norman Mailer, and in 2003 published A More Abundant Life: New Deal Artists and Public Art in New Mexico. Jacque was an editor for Sunstone Press in Santa Fe.
She had a warm spot for contemporary music and for liberal causes. In fact, she was always concerned for the human side of the arts, the reality of life for artists and musicians. With her sense of humor, Jacque could be counted on to jolt you with a wonderful surprise. That humor was always there, carried with a constantly smiling spirit throughout the ordeal of her infirmity. After time spent with her, I always went away feeling better about everything. After the fall she suffered in her home a year ago last May, she endured nine operations. And yet, in hearing her over the phone, one would never guess what she was going through. One heard only that ever-upward spirit.
(Robert P. Commanday, founding editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle from 1965 to 1993, and before that a conductor and lecturer at UC Berkeley.)
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