W is for William Joseph Hork

I am participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge (April 2016), where we write 26 blog posts featuring each letter of the alphabet.

W is for William Joseph Hork

William Joseph Hork was born 23 April 1930, just days after the 1930 census, so he wasn’t listed. His parents were William Cyril Hork and Anna Marie Sullivan.

As a child he was called Billy and he was the youngest of four children. I think his older three sisters probably doted on him a bit. His sisters still called him Billy.

He was young when his parents separated and was ten when his mother moved the family to Napa, California. There he served as an altar boy at St. John’s Catholic Church and was in Boy Scouts. In high school he played football. He once told me he could throw the football with either hand, and it was a clever deception to the other team.

Although he was left-handed, he could print very well and if the times had been better, perhaps he would have worked as a draftsman or even an architect. He used his skill as the sign maker for the weekly specials at the grocery store, LoRay in Walnut Creek. In those days, large paper signs were posted in the large windows at the front of the store announcing that week’s specials. He made the signs at home and it was fun to watch him use the large magic markers. Our house would have that chemical smell afterwards which I still find pleasant. I wish I had a photo of one of the signs.

He worked hard, most of the time six days a week while we were growing up. His hobbies I guess would have been watching football. In the early 70’s he had season tickets to the Raiders games. After the Raiders moved to Los Angeles, he became an even bigger 49er fan. In his later years, he kept track of the teams using paper spreadsheets; the same way he kept track of the stocks he purchased, another of his hobbies. He also liked to garden until his health prevented him from doing that.

Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.