Roger Alan Hoffman
1924 – 2017
Dr. Roger A. Hoffman, Biology professor emeritus at Colgate University from 1965 to 1990, passed away on the afternoon of May 11 at his home in Hamilton, NY. He was 93 years old. He is survived by his daughters Christine E. Hoffman of Sherburne, NY, and Patricia A. Hoffman of Sherrill, NY; his son Roger Alan Hoffman, Jr. and his wife Michelle of Roanoke, VA; his granddaughter Erin Zielinski of San Francisco, CA; and numerous nieces and nephews in Hampton, CT. He is predeceased by his wife Jeanette, who died in November 2016, and by his brother Donald, from Hampton, CT.
Roger was born in Hampton, CT, the son of Vera and Albert Hoffman, and he was the only one in his family to go to college, earning a B.S. from the University of Connecticut-Storrs, and Master’s and Doctoral degrees from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He was one of the first scientific research professors at Colgate University, bringing in significant grant funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. He was a much beloved professor and maintained strong enduring ties with many of his students and lab technicians throughout the years since his retirement.
Before college, Roger enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 1943 and served as a Private First Class with Company A, 38th Infantry Regiment during World War II. He was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes region of Belgium and honorably discharged in November 1945.
After returning to Connecticut from the war, he married Elizabeth Pawlikowski; they were divorced in 1968. Following ten years of bachelorhood, while on sabbatical from Colgate and serving as a Rotating Program Director of Regulatory Biology at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C., he met Jeanette Ruth, an Associate Program Director in the same department. They were married in 1979 and moved back to Hamilton that same year. Their 37-year marriage was comprised of travel and adventure, fun and laughter, close friends, and an enduring deep companionship that overcame all of life’s travails.
Roger was a true Renaissance man – a connoisseur of wine and Scotch, an excellent and adventurous gourmet cook, a bread baker extraordinaire, and a self-taught designer and crafter of fine furniture in his three-room basement workshop. He had a wide-ranging intellectual curiosity and read voraciously. He deeply appreciated the arts and creativity in all its forms, and his love of nature and animals – hamsters, in particular – was boundless. His passing leaves a profoundly-felt void.
Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to Burgess & Tedesco. Calling hours will be held on Friday, May 26, from 1-3 p.m. at 25 Broad Street, Hamilton, NY, with burial following immediately at the Colgate University Cemetery where he will be laid to rest next to Jeanette.

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