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JERRY HOOT
In Memoriam
Jerry Hoot
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“It is with great sadness that I announce the death of Jerry, my soul mate, father of the best two kids in the world, my travel partner, husband of 43 years, and my best friend. During the past 10 months, he has endured pain in his spine, pelvis, and ribs from metastasized cancer of unknown origin. As a result of not knowing the primary source of his cancer, his treatment was generic rather than specific but he did show improvement throughout much of 2024. Sadly at the end of the year, the constant chemo infusions took their toll and on January 20th we signed him up for hospice care at home and hired daily nurses to help us take care of him. He passed away on January 30th with his daughter Whitney, son James, and me holding his hands. It was profoundly sad, yet deeply moving. Born on September 19th, 1946 to Barney and Edna Hoot in Longview, Texas, Jerry spent his youth growing up with his two younger siblings, brother Tommie and sister Linda in Sulphur, Oklahoma. Jerry was a math whiz and graduated with degrees in mathematics and physics from Southeastern Oklahoma State University with plans to go on to a PhD program at Penn State. No longer allowing draft deferment for secondary degrees however, the Vietnam War changed his plans and he became a captain in the Air Force where he earned a Master's degree and then taught orbital mechanics and satellite tracking, going on to use these talents for a year in Thailand. After leaving the Air Force, he began a career in aerospace, first in California and then in 1978 he took on a short assignment to Harrogate, England. It was there, at a cigarette machine at Carringtons nightclub, that we met - and we have been inseparable ever since. What was meant to be a short stay ended up being three years. We moved to the USA together in 1981 and returned to England to get married later that year. During Jerry's career he worked on several projects, but two he could talk about were the Hubble Space Telescope and Globalstar. He played a crucial role in the early stages of computer software development and was passionate about that aspect of his work. Jerry was foremost a sailor, it was his passion and he was never happier than when he was sailing with his family on the Chesapeake Bay and later in life traveling down south for the winter, to Florida, the Bahamas, Dry Tortugas or the once in a lifetime trip to Cuba for a month in 2017. When not sailing, Jerry enjoyed world travel to Asia, Europe and Central America with special fond memories of Machu Picchu and the Galapagos where we traveled in 2023. Jerry had a great sense of humor and frequently got an eye roll from his kids after he exclaimed that a good meal had Ruint his appetite (as the old Cajun said), that he was livin' large, or whenever he sang Froggy Went a Courtin. In recent conversations, Jerry often recalled a song he heard at a Blues Festival in Vero Beach last February, performed by Eliza Neals, titled Something is Better than Nothing. In the song, she sings, 'If you wake up in the morning without a tag on your toe, it's a good day. Jerry embraced this sentiment and, when asked how he was doing, would respond with a lighthearted, I woke up this morning without a tag on my toe! To celebrate the life of this lovely man, we will be inviting family and friends to join us the first Saturday in June, TBD. Hope to see you then to toast this incredible man, one who we all are so grateful to have spent our lives with." |
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The Chesapeake Bristol Club is an active group of Bristol and non Bristol owners.
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