Helen C. Hoggard, 94, who joined FUMC on April 17, 1977, died on March 12 in Wichita Falls.  A memorial service will be held on Monday, March 15, at 11am in the Sanctuary of First United Methodist Church in Wichita Falls with Rev. Paul Goodrich and Rev. John Dillard officiating.

She had been married to the Rev. Dr. Earl Hoggard for 59 years before he died in 1995. They are survived by their two sons, James Martin Hoggard and his wife Lynn of Wichita Falls and Charles Clyde Hoggard and his wife Connie of Irving; two grandchildren, J. Jordan Hoggard of Denver, and Bryn Basiardanes and her husband Tim of Houston; and two great-grandsons, Nickolas and Jack Basiardanes of Houston.

Born in Dallas on April 20, 1915, to Gustave and Annie Christensen, Mrs. Hoggard graduated as valedictorian from Highland Park High School. The award also carried with it a scholarship that allowed her to go to college. She chose Southern Methodist University which was only a few blocks from her house. She graduated with honors with a double major in English and French. She was also an accomplished pianist, and her sons remember coming home from school and often hearing her playing Beethoven sonatas as they came in the house.

When she turned 55, she quit playing golf and took up tennis and the study of classical Greek because, she said, she had always wanted to read The Odyssey in the original. With a close friend of hers in Sherman, she kept up her study of Greek for more than twenty years and didn’t quit playing tennis until she was 80.

She was preceded in death by her parents; and her sister, Clara Mae Davis and her husband Samuel M. Davis, Sr.; two close cousins, Bob and Dorothy Brown; her nephew, Samuel M. Davis, Jr., and Louanne Ten Eyck.

After her father’s death when she was five, Helen’s mother began taking in boarders to keep the household afloat. For a long time, though, in the late afternoon, Helen would go outside and sit on a front porch step, waiting for her father to come back home on the street car from downtown.

The association she and her husband had with Wichita Falls was long and deep. They moved here from Robert Lee in the late 1930s when her husband was named associate pastor of First Methodist Church, then, after other pastorates, they were at Floral Heights Methodist from 1951 to 1961. They moved back later when her husband became district superintendent of the Wichita Falls district. Other pastorates were in Henrietta, Dallas, Greenville, University Park, Sherman, and Garland. More inclined to deeply personal friendships than to generic attachments, she and her friends stayed close to each other through the years. In addition to being unbreakably loyal to those she loved, she also had a barbed wit. Some said, too, that to be one of her pets meant knowing what truly good fortune means.

Memorials may be made to:

• First United Methodist Church in Wichita Falls;
• Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra;
• The House of Hope;
• Hospice of Wichita Falls;
• Midwestern State University; or
• Other valuable organizations of choice.

Leave a note below about what Helen meant to you.

Posted on March 14th, 2010 by tsims in Funeral Information, News