Charlotte Hoecker will be remembered Saturday as an ice-skating dynamo who shared her passion for the sport with the Wausau area for more than 30 years.
Hoecker died Sept. 15 after suffering from a variety of illnesses, including a mass in her lung and kidney failure, according to her daughter, Marian Hoecker-Hahn. Hoecker was 92.
Her memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church, 330 McClellan St. A visitation will be held from noon to 1 p.m.
Hoecker was married to Raymond Hoecker, and they had four children. Before moving to Wausau in 1979, the family lived in Illinois, Texas and Maine.
Hoecker grew up in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, and her father, who played hockey for Northwestern University, first taught her to skate when she was 4 years old. She immediately loved the sport, and it never waned. She taught skating in Wausau for 30 years but couldn’t exactly explain her love of skating when a Wausau Daily Herald reporter asked her about it just before she turned 80.
“I just do,” Hoecker said. “Skating is such a joy.”
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Hoecker did not contain her delight with ice skating to the rink. She wore skate earrings, skate necklaces and skating sweaters. She filled walls by displaying her collection of antique skates.
Although her skating, particularly after she turned 80, raised her profile in the community, she also was active in many other areas of civic life. Hoecker was a singer and performed with CenterStage Band and Show Choir, Wausau Pro Musica and the St. John’s church choir.
Hoecker delivered meals to elderly people and volunteered with the Special Olympics of Wisconsin.
She also liked to golf, ski, sew, cook and attend aerobics classes, according to the obituary written by her children. “Most of these activities she continued to do even in her 90s,” it read. “Those who met her were often struck by her quirky humor, zest for life and her feisty spirit.”
Hoecker always had a creative mind, Hoecker-Hahn said. When she and her siblings were young, a family tradition was to participate in Halloween parades. Thanks to her parents, the children had elaborate costumes such as dragons or skunks.
One year, Hoecker-Hahn remembers, her mother forgot about the parade. At the last minute, Ray and Charlotte contrived to make their four children costumes so they could march in the parade as old-fashioned paper dolls.
“They did it in a matter of hours,” Hoecker-Hahn said. “My mom would come up with these ideas for doing these things.”
The secret to it all, Hoecker said to the Daily Herald in 2009, was to keep busy and keep moving.
“Energy creates energy,” Hoecker said.
Contact Keith Uhlig at 715-845-0651 or kuhlig@gannett.com. Follow him at @UhligK on Twitter and Instagram or on Facebook.
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