In Rememberance ... Ronald G. Hoover

Jan. 23, 1935-June 24, 2007

Ronald G. Hoover, 72, died June 24, 2007, in Dublin, Ireland, after a heart attack. Hoover retired as an assistant English professor from Penn State Altoona in 1999 after thirty-four years. He was a 1953 graduate of Altoona Catholic High School, where he was president of his class. He was a 1959 graduate of Penn State and attended the University of Notre Dame. He completed a master's degree in education in 1965. He attended the W.B. Yeats Summer School in Sligo, Ireland, in 1973. He also taught at the former Joseph Johns Junior High School in Johnstown, where he was the Teacher of the Year in 1961, and at Hollidaysburg Junior High School. Ron had a passion for Irish literature, teaching and coaching.

He coached football for many years at Bishop Guilfoyle (serving as head varsity coach in 1963), Altoona and Mechanicsburg high schools and the Altoona Parochial League.

Tim Panaccio ('75) has been at the Philadelphia Inquirer for nineteen years and has covered hockey there for a decade. He pays tribute to Hoover at http://www.hockeybuzz.com/blog.php?post_id=8223 online; the following is an excerpt from his June 25 posting.

May You Be In Heaven Half An Hour Before The Devil Knows You're Dead.

The message, scribbled on a piece of paper, was from Neil Rudel, longtime sports columnist for the Altoona Mirror.

"Ron Hoover died in the a.m. in Ireland."

The very instant my wife, Carla, told me that Rudel had called, I instinctively knew that Ron was gone. When she said he died of a massive heart attack vacationing in Ireland, I smiled.

That's the way Hoover would have wanted. Sean O'Casey would have been proud. He always talked about his love for Ireland.

We drank Rolling Rocks at Henry's, a neighborhood bar, just a couple hundred feet from his home on Pine Avenue the night he told me that if he could have chosen a way to leave this world, it would be to die on Irish soil.

How many people get to choose where they cross into the next life?

My God, the man … unknown to most of Penn State University … had achieved something no other assistant professor of literature had done in Pennsylvania: he had established Irish Literature at one of America's largest universities.

Albeit, a branch campus of Penn State … Altoona.