The new flag pole at the Greene County Community Center was dedicated Friday afternoon, Oct. 30, to the memory of longtime community volunteer Harry Hoffman. About 40 persons, including many members of the Jefferson Kiwanis Club, attended the brief ceremony.
Vi Hoffman thanked volunteer Vern Foje, Jefferson park and recreation director Vicky Lautner and the city crew for their efforts to take out the overgrown black locust tree and erect the 25-foot flag pole. “I had no idea how much work that was going to be,” Hoffman said.
She told of their decision to sell their South Dakota farm and purchase the Coast to Coast hardware store in Jefferson in 1971. They sold the store in 1991, and Harry spent the next 20-plus years volunteering for things he hadn’t had time for before. Vi remembered Harry saying, as he accepted an award for volunteer service several years ago, “As long as God gives me the strength, I’ll continue to volunteer.”
Foje noted that Harry loved three things: his wife Vi, Trinity Lutheran Church and God, and the Jefferson Kiwanis Club.
Harry passed away last February at the age of 90. Vi noted that the day the flag pole was erected, Oct. 16, would have been their 66th wedding anniversary. The pole, flag, and LED solar lighting, was paid for with memorial money given at the time of Harry’s death.
Boy Scouts from Troop 534 raised the flag and led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance. James Healy, a 2008 Jefferson-Scranton graduate and now vocal music director at Waterloo West High School, sang the National Anthem.
Harry Hoffman
