Bill Text: VA HR17 | 2010 | Regular Session | Enrolled
Bill Title: Celebrating the life and letters of William Hoffman.
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Republican 1-0)
Status: (Passed) 2010-02-19 - House: Bill text as passed House (HR17ER) [HR17 Detail]
Download: Virginia-2010-HR17-Enrolled.html
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WHEREAS, as Samuel Johnson well declared, "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors"; and WHEREAS, one of the chief glories of Virginia for decades was that the writer William Hoffman made his home in Charlotte Court House; and WHEREAS, William Hoffman was the author of 14 novels—each of them acclaimed by critics and cherished by a devoted readership—and four collections of short stories, many of which adorned the pages of the greatest of all American literary journals, the Sewanee Review; and WHEREAS, William Hoffman was sometimes a revered instructor, first, briefly, as an associate professor of English and subsequently as writer-in-residence at Hampden-Sydney College, from whose fabled halls he was graduated in 1949, thereafter pursuing graduate studies at Washington and Lee University and the University of Iowa; and WHEREAS, William Hoffman in his fiction explored "themes of human confusion, conflict, and hope in war and in life," seeking through the characters of his creation, in places imbued with the traditions of Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky, to explore as well "human nature and the heights and depths of the human spirit"; and WHEREAS, William Hoffman, in his wisdom, well understood that "to be alive is to experience suffering and pain," and in the voice of one of his most memorable characters observed that "to grieve, a man has to be alive and to care about something"; and WHEREAS, William Hoffman, who, though born in Charleston of West Virginia on May 16, 1925, spent much of his youth and most of his adult life in Virginia, died on September 12, 2009; now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, That the House of Delegates express its sense of bereavement at the loss of one of Virginia's greatest men of letters and convey to William Hoffman's family and to readers of the rising generation its admiration of a gentleman, scholar, and author of works that will endure so long as men and women tend to the higher arts of the imagination; and, be it RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates prepare a copy of this resolution for presentation to the family of William Hoffman as an expression of the House of Delegates' respect for his memory. |
