After a wonderful life, John W. Hoffman, 87, passed away on May 24 at the Cape Canaveral Hospital, Cocoa Beach, Florida. He resided in Scituate, Massachusetts, until he moved to Florida in 1999.

Born in Boston, Mr. Hoffman attended Boston English High School. To finance his college education, he bought older homes and refurbished them. He graduated from Tufts University in 1942 and served in the Navy during World War II as executive officer on a minesweeper in the Pacific until his discharge in 1946.

Mr. Hoffman was President of the Northeast Institute of Industrial Technologies, retiring in 1998 after more than 50 years of service. He co-founded Northeast Educational Services and served as a Trustee of the Henry David Thoreau Scholarship Program. Since he had a great interest in environmental education, he sought to foster consciousness of our natural world among high school students by providing them college scholarships to study environmental subjects.

Mr. Hoffman had other enthusiasms in his life: cooking, which he cultivated at Hoffman's, the family bakery on Centre Street, Jamaica Plain; and boating and fishing, as a member of the Scituate Yacht Club and owner of various motor yachts and sailboats. He was also a keen student of the stock market and followed the economy very closely. In his final year at the Merritt Island Nursing Home, he took great pride in showing issues of Spotlight to the other residents.

The Board of Trustees and all the members of Northeast Educational Services and the Thoreau Foundation will miss Mr. Hoffman's guidance and insight. With the organization he helped develop, we will carry on his vision for a better environment. John Galvin

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