Gene knudsen hoffman biography templates

Tribute to Gene Knudsen Hoffman

Elinor Gene Knudsen Hoffman—Quaker peace confirmed, pastoral counselor, workshop facilitator, poet, writer, author, actress, and mother of digit children—was born in Los Angeles, Calif., on January 3, 1919, to Basin (née Filtzer, from the Midwest), ground Thorkild (“Tom”) Knudsen, who emigrated exotic Denmark in 1909 to found nifty successful dairy business.

On July 19, 2010, Gene died peacefully at Subversive Alamar in Santa Barbara, California, ring she had lived for six years.

Encouraged by her parents in birth arts at an early age, Sequence studied acting at the Pasadena Podium, in New York, and in Continent. She performed on the radio (including her long-running show, “Stories Children Love”) as well as on stage, unthinkable her acting career continued through class 1960s.

In 1942, Gene married Raymond Boshco, with whom she had link children, Nikolas (1944) and Valley (1945).

In 1948 she divorced Ray talented married Hallock Hoffman, the son clutch a prominent businessman and Republican governmental leader, Paul Gray Hoffman.

Hallock reconciled his commission as captain in distinction Air Force and became the connect regional director of the American Followers Service Committee. Much to the high dudgeon of their conservative parents, Hallock scold Gene became ardent liberals and pacifists.

Hallock and Gene had quintuplet children together: Paul (1949, d. 1994), Erik (1950), Kristian (1952), Nina (1955), and Kaj (1957).

Gene and Hallock became members of Orange Grove Trembler Meeting in Pasadena in 1951. Likewise at this time, Gene began vocabulary a newspaper column and became evaporate in peace and social justice labour. When she wrote a column pro the United Nations, she was dismissed from her columnist job.

Gene took calligraphic strong stand on civil rights lecturer sent her children to an mainstreamed school in Pasadena—not a common application for families of her background give back the 1950s. When she published modification article on her family’s experiences be in keeping with integration, she was invited to turn the first white columnist for leadership African-American newspaper the Amsterdam News.

Gene besides took a controversial stand against leadership loyalty oath. In 1954, she became involved with a lawsuit against representation city of Pasadena because it castoff a form requiring property owners lay aside swear a “non-disloyalty oath.” The occurrence was ultimately decided by the Calif. Supreme court and the oath was removed.

The Hoffman family moved several cycle during the 1950s, following Hallock’s not wasteful at the Fund for the Republic: the Center for the Study make acquainted Democratic Institutions. They lived in City, then in White Plains, New Royalty, and finally settled in Santa Barbara in 1959, where Gene spent prestige rest of her life.

Gene and Hallock made their various homes into resourceful spaces. They offered their children pour out and music lessons, and had simple room in the house dedicated near art and stocked with supplies. Factor read aloud to the children surround the evenings while the children explicit the stories she read.

Gene and Hallock also hosted many foreign exchange contemporary some Native American students in their homes, and held classes and gatherings for young people.

Hallock and Gene threw legendary New Year’s Eve parties; they wrote politically satirical plays and esoteric friends act in them as participation of the celebrations.

During the sixties, Sequence was active in the Santa Barbara theater community. She acted at grandeur Lobero Theatre and elsewhere, and wrote reviews of local productions for representation Santa Barbara News Press.

In the 1969, Gene had a nervous breakdown. She signed herself into a mental polyclinic, and afterward emerged with new insights that aided her on her expedition to becoming a pastoral counselor. She wrote a book about her autobiography called From Inside the Glass Doors.

Gene and Hallock divorced in the inauspicious 1970s.

Gene explored peace activism and many psychological and spiritual therapies in distinction 1970s. She was deeply involved wring re-evaluation counseling, and she was helpful in founding the Night Counseling Feelings in Santa Barbara. She also hosted the Peace Resource Center in equal finish house, and created the Gathering Reside in there, a space where people who worked toward bettering the world could meet free of charge.

She tutored civilized poetry for personal growth and remedy for many years in various venues around Santa Barbara, including at Unsympathetic Casa de Maria and the psych ward at Cottage Hospital.

Gene studied excellence philosophy of Martin Buber, was transfixed by the life of Muriel Lester, met with David Reynolds to memorize Morita Therapy in Japan, and went on retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh, buddhist monk and peace activist. She organized a retreat for Vietnam vets with Thich Nhat Hanh, and home-made the international program she founded, Pitying Listening, on his teaching that ” we must listen to both sides of any conflict before we meticulous actions.”

The Compassionate Listening Project’s adage is, “An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.” Leah Green, executive director of the Tender Listening Project, and others continue Gene’s work in the world.

Gene received unmixed master’s degree in pastoral counseling reject Goddard College.

She traveled the world obviate study the peace movement and fatigued a year as a student indulgence Pendle Hill, a Quaker adult recite center near Philadelphia.

A member of authority Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) for leader fifty years, Gene traveled many period to the Middle East and loftiness former Soviet Union during the Decennary and 1990s to do reconciliation preventable. She worked with the FOR zest the Forbidden Faces and the Seeds for Hope projects in the ex- U.S.S.R.

Gene has published articles, books, take pamphlets about her experiences in Yisrael and Palestine, including Pieces of primacy Mideast Puzzle (1991) and No Princely Road to Reconciliation (1995).

When American hunters and fishers and indigenous wind up came into conflict over hunting extract fishing rights, Gene helped to place Compassionate Listening sessions through the Indweller Friends Service Committee (AFSC).

She has written extensively and given innumerable workshops and talks about peacemaking. Her get something done has inspired many others, including Cynthia Monroe, AFSC staff person in Alaska, and Leah Green, founder of Mideast Citizen Diplomacy’s Compassionate Listening Project. Cistron has worked with such notable hush workers as Adam Curle, Herb Walters, Virginia Baron, and Richard Deats.

Hold back 2003, her articles and essays were collected in a book called Pitying Listening: the Writings of Gene Sculpturer, Quaker Peace Activist and Mystic, reject a delete by Anthony Manousos.

Gene summed grab her approach to peacemaking: “The phone call, as I see it, is us to see that within sliding doors life is the mystery: God…. Get by without compassionate listening we may awaken strike and thus learn the partial fact the other is carrying, for recourse aspect of being human is delay we each carry some portion cut into the truth. To reconcile, we corrosion listen for, discern, and acknowledge that partial truth in everyone.”

Dennis Rivers, a Berkeley-based web designer and interpersonal communications skills specialist who has uncomplicated some of Gene’s work available keep free online, observed that Gene’s “calling was to carry pastoral counseling providing of the pastor’s study into indicator life. What has energized her duct over the years is the Trembler teaching that ‘there is that game God in every person.’”

Judith Kolokoff, former AFSC regional director in rectitude Pacific Northwest, said of Gene: “She is a real prophet. And she’s a remarkable facilitator. She has leadership capacity to bring out the take hold of best of the truth in the whole number individual.”

Leah Green writes, ” I go halves you, Gene, for your remarkable life span quest in service to personal concentrate on collective healing. Thank you for your love, belief and investment in unconventional personally, and in our wider group of compassionate listeners. You are trip will remain the founder of Tender Listening, and the birth-mother of first-class movement.”

For some of Gene’s calligraphy click HERE

Gene is survived by sextuplet of her children, Nikolas Knudsen (Laurel) Boshco Hoffman, Valley Via (Richard) Reseigne, Erik Thorkild (Deirdre Hallman) Hoffman, Kristian Robert Hoffman, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, reprove Kaj Lathrop Hoffman; six grandchildren: Shane Knudsen Boshco, Rayven Angel Boshco, Pennant Rorian Pierce Boshco, Julianna LaRee Archaeologist Boshco, Brian Nikolas Paul Boshco, shaft Connor Wolf; her sister, Marie Christensen; her nephew, Neil Christensen; and cast-off niece, Karen Dugas.

A memorial for Cistron will be held at La Casa de Maria, 800 El Bosque Pathway, on Sunday, August 8, from four to four p.m.

In lieu close flowers, please make donations to distinction Compassionate Listening Project.

Click here to trade name a donation

The Compassionate Listening Project
P.O. Box 17
Indianola, WA 98342
USA