Today's Featured Biography

 
Sharon Fogleman Hockensmith

After earning my BA from Stanford (spent my junior year abroad in Germany backpacking through Europe and catching the travel bug -- more on that later), I went to Indiana University for a Masters degree in English.

Back in Phoenix during the summer of 1966, I met a young Air Force fighter pilot, 1st Lt. William R. Hockensmith, who was going through F-100 training at Luke. Our courtship lasted two whole weeks before we decided to get married (pretty hard to believe, right?). He graduated Top Gun of his flying class, which gave me the opportunity to tell Senator Barry Goldwater, who presented Bill his award, that I had campaigned for him in an ill-fated national election -- yes, I was an early conservative so you can imagine the heat of some of my late-night political discussions with fellow Stanford students!

Three months later, Bill was off to Vietnam (and it’s a good thing -- it took me the year to learn to cook). He retired from the Air Force 27 years later as a Colonel so essentially I spent life as a “camp follower,” as we military spouses affectionately call ourselves.

While he was in Vietnam, I taught English at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and when he came back, we were stationed in England where my daughter Melinda was born in 1969.

Remember our high school classmate, Barry Rapalas? He was also stationed in England and he and his wife visited us at our home in Bishop's Stortford to meet my baby daughter. A few months later, he died in an F-4 crash in Germany. Ironically, my son Bill D. was born during another assignment at Luke in 1971, where husband Bill taught German pilots to fly the F-104.

Military life means constant travel and requires incredible flexibility, but it also affords the opportunity to meet fascinating people and make lifelong friends. I taught school where I could, did volunteer charity work, wrote for local publications, led women’s groups and raised kids.

We particularly enjoyed an assignment in Amman, Jordan in 1977-9, when Bill was Air Attache to Ambassadors Pickering and Veliotes. He got to fly jets with the Royal Jordanian Air Force while I performed “representational duties” for the State Department (one was giving an archeology lecture to Lady Bird Johnson and General Curtis LeMay, my father’s WWII idol, and another was enjoying a Mensaf lunch with a Bedouin sheik under a huge black tent in the Wadi Rum).

I was elected President of the American Women of Amman, which enabled me to make some fascinating Arab friends, with whom I still correspond, and American women married to Jordanians. Before he married Queen Noor, who incidentally was our next-door neighbor, King Hussein even kissed my hand once -- didn’t wash it for a week.

After we returned to the US, we had several more Air Force assignments in Alabama, New Mexico, Utah where Bill flew the F-16, and in Texas where I was an instructor in English at the University of Texas at San Antonio -- even managed to get a couple articles published in educational journals.

Then when Bill retired from the Air Force in 1989, he accepted a Project Director position at an aircraft modifications company in Waco, and I used my security clearance to edit military tech manuals in a “Black Program” at the same company (can’t tell you any details or I’d have to -- well, you know).

When Bill joined Northwest Airlines in Minnesota, I edited technical proposals for engineers at Alliant Techsystems and then became a Research Manager in a marketing agency in downtown Minneapolis (pay was better). That was just about the time the Internet first opened to the general public and I transitioned my Lexis-Nexis search skills to Web searches for new business development in marketing.

Bill went to work for Rockwell Collins in California in 1998, so I dutifully broke camp and followed him to San Dimas, CA. By then I was an expert with online databases at a time that the IT department at WesCorp, the Corporate Credit Union in San Dimas, needed to upgrade all its computer technology in preparation for Y2K.

Always a teacher, I gave WesCorp staff lessons on how to use Google (it had just been launched) and caught the attention of the CEO. After Y2K, I worked as his Research Manager doing competitive intelligence, and later when he joined the Board of Directors at Wescom Central Credit Union in Pasadena, I became Project Manager for Research there (think of the TV roles of Penelope Garcia on “Criminal Minds” or Abby Sciuto on “NCIS” and you’ll have an idea of what I did -- too bad I didn’t get paid what they do).

Bill retired for good in 2005, so we sold our California casa just before the California housing market crashed - hooray!! (Ask me about the Mexican mafia member who bought the house and what the FBI did -- hey, even if it was drug money, I’m keeping it!) We moved to McKinney, Texas, near Dallas to help with our first-born grandson and to travel (yeah, I know: you’d think we’d have had enough of that but still got that bug).

So far, we’ve enjoyed at least two overseas trips a year. In 2014, I'm doing a river cruise in the Netherlands with military pals, taking a tour of Scotland with Shirley Sharp Hawkins and her husband Neal and cruising the Northern Coast of Africa with the Stanford Alumni Association.

Retirement has been an adjustment for me, but it is truly gratifying to be so near our delightful grandkids. We now have four grandchildren -- Chase, Grace, Caitlin and Colton -- in Texas and two bonus-granddaughters -- Cassidy and Gabby -- in Colorado, and to be free to sleep in on weekdays instead of the other way around.

Anyway, I'm finding ways to keep busy – it’s amazing how “stuff” manages to expand with the time one has available. I love the Internet because I can easily keep in touch with friends especially on Facebook and stay informed about current events. I enjoy gardening, reading, and writing -- I occasionally write a local newspaper column and of course, Letters to the Editor -- had one published in the "Wall Street Journal" and a couple in the "Air Force Magazine."

Like so many of you, God has truly been good to me, and while falling in love with an Air Force fighter pilot back in 1966 certainly changed my plans for my life, I have no regrets. I’ve been blessed in ways I never could have dreamed of those many years ago when we all graduated from WHS with stars in our eyes.

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