B10 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARIESSATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 2020
Faces From the Coronavirus Pandemic
Those We’ve Lost
Willie Doria picked up a baseball bat and
came to the plate at a 1989 reunion game for
the Spanish American Baseball League in
San Antonio, Texas. When the pitcher, who
had good speed, sent a fastball down the
middle, Mr. Doria knocked it straight out of
Sanchez-Spencer Memorial Park.
He was 65 years old.
“A true home run hitter,” Joe Sanchez, a
longtime friend, said.
Mr. Doria joined the league in 1946, play-
ing for several teams over a decade, and
brought home the championship four years
in a row. The amateur circuit, which existed
in some form from 1926 to 2005, was a cor-
nerstone of San Antonio baseball and an im-
portant home for Hispanic ballplayers.
Mr. Doria died on July 8 in San Antonio,
after contracting the novel coronavirus, his
granddaughter Cheyenne Doria said. He
was 96.
William Martinez Doria Jr. was born in
the city on April 1, 1924, to William Doria, a
laborer, and Susie Martinez Doria, a home-
maker. He enlisted in the Navy in 1942,
serving as an aircraft mechanic on the
U.S.S. Saratoga aircraft carrier in World
War II and was discharged at the war’s end.
While he was playing in the Spanish Ameri-
can League, he worked at a wholesale
produce firm.
In 1957 he enlisted in the Air Force, where
he worked for four years on a secret surveil-
lance aircraft in various parts of the coun-
try, his family said (he rarely talked about
the job), before returning to San Antonio,
where he worked for another 20 years at
the Kelly Air Force Base, now called Kelly
Field, as an aircraft mechanic in flight oper-
ations.
“The Air Force, baseball and his familywere his passions,” another granddaughter,
April Martinez, said. “He would light up
even just watching his great-grandchil-
dren.”
In retirement, he returned to his baseball
roots: Mr. Doria worked for 26 years as an
usher at Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Sta-
dium, home of the San Antonio Missions mi-
nor league club. He branched out into bas-
ketball, working as an usher for the San An-
tonio Spurs of the N.B.A., first at the Alam-
odome and then the AT&T Center.
At Missions games, he was a friendly fix-
ture for the players and coaches, their fam-
ilies and fans. Until the coronavirus pan-
demic shuttered sports, he could be found
at his usual perch, a seat by the entrance to
the dugout on the third-base side.
His two grandchildren, Ms. Martinez and
Ms. Doria, who grew up in the house with
their grandparents, went to Missions
games with their grandfather, where they
could run freely around the stadium and
meet the players and their families.
“He ruled that place, to be honest,” Ms.
Doria said.
Along with Ms. Doria and Ms. Martinez,
he is survived by three children, Andrew,
Samuel and Catherine Doria; a brother,
Vic; a sister, Consuelo Doria Rocha; and
two great-grandchildren. His wife, Mary,
died in 2002.
He always attended the reunion games of
the Spanish American league, as long as his
buddy Mr. Sanchez was there.
“He was so magnetic,” said Mr. Sanchez,
the son of “Sandy” Sanchez, Mr. Doria’s
first coach and namesake of Sanchez-
Spencer Memorial Park. He would talk to
patrons about anything, Mr. Sanchez said,
“but almost always baseball. He loved
baseball.”Willie Doria, 96
Texas Baseball Star, Air Force Veteran and Usher at Games
By GILLIAN R. BRASSILFor Willie Doria, “the Air Force, baseball and his family were his passions.”JOSIE NORRIS/SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWSAfter serving as dean of women at Flor-
ida State University in the late 1960s, Kath-
erine B. Hoffman said that her biggest ac-
complishment had been abolishing her own
position.
Bringing female students under the
same administrators as men belonged to a
larger agenda: creating greater gender eq-
uity at the school. As dean, Ms. Hoffman
also eased the dress code for women and
abolished their curfew.
“They had to wear essentially what were
like trench coats,” Norris Hoffman, Ms.
Hoffman’s son, recalled. “F.S.U. still
thought that the cars in which women were
riding would turn into pumpkins at mid-
night.”
Ms. Hoffman, who spent 88 years con-
nected to the university, died on July 18 at
Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare. She was- Her son said the cause was Covid-19.
“A couple of people,” Sherrill Ragans, a
retired F.S.U. administrator, said, “have
sent an email saying, ‘I thought she was
eternal.’ ”
Katherine Marie Blood was born on Aug.
1, 1914, in Winter Haven, Fla. Her father,
Norman Wyckoff Blood, “used to take rich
Yankees on fishing trips,” Mr. Hoffman said,
and later became a citrus grower. Her
mother, Laura (McCrary) Blood, was a
schoolteacher.
Katherine, known as Kitty, arrived at
Florida State College for Women, which lat-
er became F.S.U., in 1932. It was the Depres-
sion, and her father paid part of her tuition
with bundles of oranges.
She went on to become student body
president, captain of the women’s baseball
and volleyball teams, a member of Phi Beta
Kappa and the exemplar of “charm,” as cho-
sen by her fellow graduating classmates in
their 1936 yearbook.
Ms. Hoffman had hoped to earn a medical
degree from Duke University, but declined
to attend on principle after she learned that
the school ordered female students to sign a
pledge not to marry during their studies.
Instead, she obtained a master’s in chem-
istry from Columbia University in 1938 and
married her high school sweetheart, Har-
old Hoffman, who also became a chemist
and was Florida’s assistant commissioner
of agriculture.
Ms. Hoffman returned to the Florida
State College for Women as a chemistry in-
structor in 1940. In 1947, the school re-
named itself and went coeducational to ac-
commodate some of the
millions of veterans
seeking to attend college
after World War II.
Although she did not
have a doctorate, Ms.
Hoffman thrived in aca-
demia, gaining notice for
her skills as a teacher
and administrator and
writing textbooks for
Prentice Hall and McGraw-Hill. She was
promoted to full professor in 1959.
When Ms. Hoffman retired, in 1984, it was
an occasion to discover new ways to serve
her university. She gave lectures on F.S.U.’s
history and helped run its sesquicentennial
celebration. Following what her son de-
scribed as moderate donations, the univer-
sity gave Ms. Hoffman’s name to a schol-
arship, a lecture series and a teaching lab-
oratory. When the lab was rededicated in
2018, she attended the ceremony.
Harold Hoffman died in 1996.
When Ms. Hoffman was 102, her plain-
spoken advocacy for women gained a na-
tional audience. Outlets including Vox and
People carried comments she had made to I
Waited 96 Years, an initiative to collect in-
terviews with women who were born be-
fore the 19th Amendment and who planned
to vote for a female presidential candidate
(Hillary Clinton) for the first time in 2016.
“This election means that women can
achieve anything,” Ms. Hoffman declared.
Well into her 90s, Ms. Hoffman was
known to tootle around in a pink Cadillac
driven by a fellow nonagenarian. While her
son fished for largemouth bass in the
Wakulla River, Ms. Hoffman rowed their
boat. She hauled gallon jugs of water for the
pine trees they had planted.
Norris Hoffman also became a chemistry
professor, teaching at the University of
South Alabama in Mobile. He retired in
2013.
During Mr. Hoffman’s boyhood, he and
his mother planted seedlings on the family
tree farm. “We would talk about the ele-
ments, their names and their properties in
the periodic table,” he said. “She was brain-
washing me for chemistry.”Katherine Hoffman, 105
Alumna and Professor Linked to Florida State for 88 Years
By ALEX TRAUBHoffmanWaldemar Gonzalez was an an-
gry young man who turned his life
around: completed college and
graduate school, had a career as a
teacher and social worker, be-
came “Dad 2.0,” as his children
called him — calmer, less ag-
gressive and demanding, easier
on himself and others.
It was a life that began in pov-
erty with an alcoholic disciplinar-
ian father who committed suicide.
It ended in comfortable semi-
retirement in a suburban house,
with six children who had all com-
pleted college or more, a second
marriage to a superb dance part-
ner, and a fitness regimen de-
signed to vanquish mortality.
The novel coronavirus took all
of that away. Toward the end of
March, both he and his wife,
Jackie Arandes, were found to
have the virus. She recovered; he
went on a ventilator at White
Plains Hospital and died on April
24, three weeks after their wed-
ding anniversary, his children
said. He was 72.
Mr. Gonzalez was born on Jan.
18, 1948, in Yauco, Puerto Rico. His
father, Marcos, worked a variety
of jobs; his mother, Rosaura
Casiano, concentrated on the four
children.
The family moved to a small
apartment in the Bronx when
Waldemar, the third child, was 5 or
- Orsini, his younger brother, re-
membered Waldemar getting in
trouble for cutting school in junior
high.
“Waldemar was a restless soul,”
Orsini said. “His saving grace was
trombone and also sports.”
Waldemar played basketball at
Morris High School in the Bronx
and then at Bronx Community
College and the City College of
New York, where he earned a
bachelor’s degree in English in
- He got his master’s in social
work from Hunter College in Man-
hattan in 1988.
He married his high school girl-
friend, Mildred Cruz, in March
1970, when he was 22. The couple
had two sons, Rodrigo and Ariel,
before divorcing a decade later.
“That was devastating to him,”
Orsini Gonzalez said.
By the time he met Ms. Aran-
des, a teacher, at a salsa dance in
1987, Mr. Gonzalez had a daughter,
Aitza, and a direction for his pent-
up energies, working with chil-
dren and in community groups.
Three more children followed —
Julian, Andres and Leah — and a
big fixer-upper house in the
Bronx, where he added a basket-
ball court and a garden.
Dad 1.0 had been intensely de-
manding of his children, pushing
them never to experience the pov-
erty of his early years. But the sec-
ond marriage softened him, his
children said. The family moved to
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., just
north of the city, in 2006. Even
then, “He was working two jobs
and coaching, working really
late,” Ms. Gonzalez said.
He worked as a social worker
and administrator in public
schools before becoming chair-
person of the committee on spe-
cial education at the Mount Pleas-
ant Cottage School in Westchester
County, and after he retired he still
counseled very young children
with autism a few days a week. He
was fastidious about his health —
the rare owner of a Bowflex exer-
cise machine who actually used it.
But his efforts to avoid expo-
sure to the coronavirus were not
enough. The hardest part, his chil-
dren said, was that he had done
everything to have a big family
around him but that at the end he
was alone because of the quaran-
tine. Along with his wife and his
brother Orsini, he is survived by
his six children; two sisters, Trini-
dad and Judith Gonzalez; and
eight grandchildren.
“He would want people to know
that he was a brilliant man, that he
believed in hard work and uncon-
ditional love,” Ms. Gonzalez said.
Waldemar
Gonzalez, 72
Teacher, Social Worker
And ‘Dad 2.0’ to 6 Kids
By JOHN LELANDWaldemar Gonzalez was the
rare owner of a Bowflex ma-
chine who actually used it.
JUDITH GONZALEZThe challenges kept coming at
Renada McGuire, and she kept
rising to the occasion.
Whether raising six children as
a single mother, fighting through
kidney and heart problems or
learning how to fish, Ms. McGuire,
family and friends said, was deter-
mined to triumph.
While raising her first son, who
was born prematurely and devel-
oped a mental disability, Ms. Mc-
Guire decided to become a home
health aide specializing in men-
tally challenged adults.
“There was just a spunk she had
in her,” her sister-in-law Natasha
Guerrero said.
Ms. McGuire died on July 4 at
Baptist Medical Center South in
Jacksonville, Fla. The cause was
complications of the novel coro-
navirus, her family said. She was
39 and lived nearby in Palm Coast.
The illness came days after Ms.
McGuire and her boyfriend,
Brooks Greene, had dined out at a
Jacksonville restaurant as the
pandemic was surging in Florida.
Renada McGuire was born on
Nov. 28, 1980, in St. Augustine,
Fla., to Jorge Guerrero Sr., a farm-
worker, and Patricia McGuire, a
home health care worker. She
adopted her mother’s surname.
When she was young, her father
was deported to Guatemala, his
home country, and never heard
from by the family again. His de-
parture made her older brother,
Jorge Jr., the family patriarch and
turned Ms. McGuire, her family
said, into a lifelong fighter.
“She didn’t back down from
anything,” Natasha Guerrero
said.
When Ms. McGuire was a child,
she stuck up for her brother when-
ever she thought he was being
threatened. “She was the little sis-
ter, but she was tough,” Ms. Guer-
rero said with a laugh. “There
were times, Jorge told me, she’d
be tougher than Jorge.”
A lover of R&B music, Ms. Mc-
Guire committed herself to “any-thing involving music” while she
was a student at Allen D. Nease
High School in Ponte Vedra, be-
coming a member of the flag team,
the winter guard and the school
band, in which she learned to play
the flute and clarinet.
She became an avid fisher-
woman after being introduced to
fishing recently by Mr. Greene.
With him by her side, she would
seek out “any little watering hole
she could find, often fishing sev-
eral times a week,” Ms. Guerrero
said. “It brought her peace.”
“The strength she had as a
mom, though — that was the
greatest thing about her,” Ms.
Guerrero said.
Ms. McGuire is survived by her
brother and her children: Elijah,
19, Victerius, 17, Tyvicrean, 16,
Alexius, 12, Kourtney, 10, and Dav-
ian, 6.
To lighten her load, Jorge and
Ms. Guerrero, who have four chil-
dren of their own, would watch
Ms. McGuire’s children on week-
ends.
That weekend role has become
full time now: They have taken
the children in.
“They need us right now,” Ms.
Guerrero said. “And, at the same
time, I think my husband needs
them as well. She was all he had
left.”Renada McGuire, 39
Resilient Home Health Aide Who Loved to Fish
By AARON RANDLERenada McGuire worked with
adults with mental disabilities.VIA MCGUIRE FAMILYHugh P. Freyer played seven-
card stud in the Bronx with a core
group of fellow recovering alco-
holics for more than 30 years. The
discretion demanded by his day
job as a private banker, combined
with the self-discipline required
by Alcoholics Anonymous, made
him more prudent than most of
those at the table.
“He always had a budget when
he played, and he did not play be-
yond his means, ever,” his daugh-
ter, Carolyn Freyer-Jones, said.
His prudence, she recalled, ex-
tended beyond poker: “He had no
debt, he paid off any credit cards
he used every month, and all of his
end-of-life details were paid in ad-
vance, by him.”
Mr. Freyer was admitted to a
Bronx hospital on June 20 for
blood pressure problems. He
tested negative for the novel coro-
navirus, as he had a week earlier
when he was examined by his own
doctor.
But the day before he was
scheduled to be released for re-
habilitation, Ms. Freyer-Jones
said, he tested positive. Nine days
later, on July 14, he died at the hos-
pital. It was his 86th birthday. She
said the cause was complications
of Covid-19.
Hugh Philip Freyer was born on
July 14, 1934, in Manhattan, the
son of Josephine (Shannon)
Freyer, an Irish immigrant who
worked as a cleaning person at
New York Hospital (now New-
York-Presbyterian), and Hugh
Freyer, a window washer who wasborn in South Africa.
He was raised in the Washing-
ton Heights neighborhood and, af-
ter graduating from George
Washington High School, served
in the Army in Korea from 1957 to
1959 as a radio operator. He
started working at what is now
Citibank in 1959 and attended
night classes at New York Univer-
sity, earning a bachelor’s degree
in business in 1967.
He rose from branch manager
to corporate vice president, then
moved to the New York office of
the London-based bank Standard
Chartered, where he was a senior
vice president until he retired in
2001 at 67.
As a member of Alcoholics
Anonymous for more than 50
years, he counseled patients at
Roosevelt Hospital (now Mount
Sinai West) who had been admit-
ted for drug and alcohol over-
doses. He also served on A.A.’s
board.
He married Gertrude Flexer in- They lived in the Riverdale
section of the Bronx. She survives
him. In addition to their daughter,
he is also survived by their sons,
Philip and Paul Freyer; seven
grandchildren; and his sister,
Kathleen Harmon.
The prudence Mr. Freyer
showed at the poker table paid off,
his daughter said.
“My dad bought every grand-
child their first car,” she said.
“Nothing fancy, just good used
cars. He made sure in his will that
there’s money set aside for my
daughter’s first car as well.”
Hugh Freyer, 86
Poker Player With the Discretion of a Banker
By SAM ROBERTSHugh Freyer was with Alcoholics Anonymous for over 50 years.VIA FREYER FAMILY