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William Souder Hockman
William Souder Hockman of North Haven, known affectionately to friends and family as “Bill,” died at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City on Friday, April 29. He was 71.
Mr. Hockman was chairman of Hockman-Lewis Limited, where he worked for 47 years. A great many of his colleagues from those years referred to him as “a true gentleman,” who was a pioneer in the industry.
Mr. Hockman was born in New Jersey in 1939 and attended the Lawrenceville School. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1962 and was a lifelong, ardent Tar Heel basketball fan. While at UNC, he met and married Frances Hyatt, his wife of more than 48 years.
After two years teaching English and History in Tampa, Florida, he joined his father’s export management business. In 1966, he moved with his family to El Salvador, where he opened Equigas de El Salvador, a distribution company that is still in business today. Mr. Hockman returned to the United States in 1970 to take over the management of his family’s export business, Hockman-Lewis Limited.
Mr. Hockman was a board member, chairman, and member of the Executive Committee of the Resource Foundation, an organization that supports self-help initiatives in Latin America. For the past five years, he hosted a festive Fourth of July pig roast at his home in North Haven to raise funds for the Resource Foundation.
Mr. Hockman also recently served on the Architectural Review Board in the village of North Haven.
Though he spent his career traveling all over the world, his heart was always in North Haven, where his parents first bought a home in the 1940s. There, he was a gracious host to friends from overseas and his door was always open to his neighbors and many local friends. Mr. Hockman pursued learning throughout his lifetime, avidly reading about history and politics. He also enjoyed golf, hunting, and fishing.
He was a devoted husband and father and is survived by his wife Frances; children, Angela Hockman of Massachusetts, Michelle Cunningham and Greg Hockman of New Jersey; and his grandchildren, Aliza, Lucy, Grace, Cole and Jack.
A memorial service will be held on Saturday, May 21, at 1 p.m. at the Old Whalers’ Church in Sag Harbor. Memorial donations may be made to the Resource Foundation, 237 West 35th Street, Suite 1203, New York, NY 10001; or the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Church Street Station, P.O. Box 780, New York, NY 10008-0780, or michaeljfox.org.
on May 16, 2011