Joseph George Hoesl's Obituary
Joseph George Hoesl
March 19, 1929, to May 3, 2015
Joseph George Hoesl went home to the Lord on Sunday May 3, 2015, at the age of 86 after succumbing to complications from a long bout with Myelofibrosis: a rare bone marrow cancer. He was born March 19, 1929, in rural North Dakota where a neighboring farmer pointed-out that the newborn should be named Joseph since he was born on St. Joseph’s Day. He was the third child of eight from his parents: George Hoesl and Rosella Beauchamp.
Joe grew up on the Hoesl Farm in North Dakota near the Canadian border during the latter part of the Great Depression. The farm originated as a homestead claim by Joe’s grandfather, an early German immigrant and pioneer settler, when North Dakota was still a Territory. The Hoesl family subsisted mostly on what could be raised or grown on the farm, which included cattle, chickens, hogs, geese, corn, potatoes, and a variety of other garden vegetables. Wheat, barley, and oat crops provided income for their other needs. Since electricity was not run to rural areas until the mid-1950’s, kerosene lamps were the sole source of artificial light. For creature comfort, entertainment came from a battery powered radio which was recharged using a rooftop wind turbine.
Joe attended elementary school in a one-room schoolhouse and advanced to Walhalla High School, which was seven miles from the farm. During his high-school years, he stayed in town with friends during the winter due to the large volume of snow and lack of rural snowplowing.
The 1950’s experienced a significant population migration from farms to urban areas with major advancements in farming technology: tractors and combine harvesters reduced labor while increasing yields and reducing crop revenue. The standard 160-acre homestead became too small for sole proprietors to make a living, and many farmers went broke, and their land and tools were sold at public auctions.
Suffice it to say, the youth flocked to urban areas to seek a better life and Joe was no exception. At the time, air conditioning/refrigeration was considered high-tech as it morphed from cost prohibitive, commercial equipment to affordable consumer appliances. Refrigeration was an ideal fit for Joe’s mechanical aptitude, and it motivated him to pursue specialized training. He graduated from the North Dakota State School of Science in 1949 where he studied the refrigeration trade and was a member of the “Refer” Refrigeration Club. With school under his belt, he worked his first year at a home appliance company in Devils Lake, North Dakota.
In September 1950, during the Korean War, he enlisted in the United States Air Force. Joe was stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington for 2.5 years, Lockbourne Air Force Base in Columbus Ohio for 6 months and overseas in French Morocco (now North Africa) for 1 year. Overseas, he supported climate-controlled bomb storage depots, including nuclear bombs, exposed to the sweltering heat of the Saraha Desert. French Morocco was a bomb waystation in readiness for Atlantic warfare with Russia and was on heightened alert during the Cold War. He rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant before receiving an honorable discharge in 1954 at the end of his 4 years of service.
After the Air Force, Joe moved to Houston on the advice of an Air Force colleague who felt the hot climate combined with the populous city would be an ideal place to relaunch his civilian career. In Houston, he met his future wife, Alice Bonefas, at a church choir gathering and they were married on September 29, 1956. Soon afterward, they purchased their first home in southeast Houston.
Joe’s first Houston area job was with York Houston, where he was assigned a sales area that spanned much of the Texas Gulf Coast and required significant travel. In 1959, Joe was offered an opportunity at Air Temperature Inc, where he worked his way up from a repairman to the service manager over the final leg of his 38-year long career, before retiring.
Joe and Alice raised five children who all reside in the Houston area. Joe’s hobbies included investing, gardening, arboriculture, playing sports with his children, maintaining his farm in Alta Loma, Texas, tinkering in the garage and riding his bicycle around the neighborhood. The Hoesl family attended St. Luke the Evangelist Catholic Church where Joe’s volunteer service was landscaping and maintaining the parish grounds. Everyone loved Joe because he was such a quiet, kind soul who was the point of reference for anything that needed to be made, figured out, fixed, or planted.
Joe was preceded in death by his wife, Alice Hoesl, his brothers Lawrence, Gerald and Donald and sister Alda. Joe leaves behind his three sisters (Shirley, Imogene and Elaine), five children; Joan Isiminger (husband John), Mark Hoesl (wife Patricia), Grace Schamburg (husband Kurt), Paul Hoesl (wife Kim), and Kristi Koncaba (husband Kenny) and eight grandchildren: Ryan Hoesl, Alice Koncaba, Brandon Hoesl, Elizabeth Hoesl, Mariel Isiminger, Cameron Isiminger, Matt Koncaba and Kristen Marinello.
A Memorial Mass, in celebration of Joe’s life, was held at 11:00am Friday, May 15, 2015, at St. Luke the Evangelist Catholic Church. His presence will be greatly missed, but we rejoice in knowing that one day we will be reunited with him in Heaven. Joe is inurned at South Park’s Garden of Hope in the Hoesl Family Cemetery next to his lifelong soulmate: Alice. An oak tree in the middle of the family cemetery bears a sign that dedicates the tree to Joe’s gardening passion.
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