Grace Thatcher  loved music and was a fine pianist. She studied with the composer Percy Granger in college, and continued to enjoy sharing her musical gift throughout her life. She also loved poetry and was a friend of Jenny Harris Oliver, the poet laureate of Oklahoma in the late 1930s. She traveled with Ms. Oliver around the state, accompanying her as she read her poetry to audiences in many small Oklahoma towns.

She and her husband, Roy Hoffman, and daughter Jeanne, moved to Miami Beach, Florida in 1942 after WWII broke out; Roy was in officer’s training camp in the Army Air Corps and served as an intelligence officer in New Guinea for two and a half years. They settled in Oklahoma City after the war, where they lived out the rest of their lives.

Grace had a philosophy she expressed often to her family; it was: “Savor whatever you are doing; there’s lots of time to enjoy it.”

Roy Hoffman Jr.  was always pleased that he had been able to fight for his country in WWII. His father had been a general in WWI and was commanding general of Oklahoma’s 45th Division in later years. Roy was a banker in Chandler, Oklahoma, and later in the oil and gas business in Oklahoma City.

Although he was not a wealthy man, he was generous with what resources he had, and he taught his family to “Leave more wood on the wood pile than was there when you came.” This philosophy instilled in his daughter Jeanne Hoffman Smith, gave her the drive to search for ways for her to “leave more wood”.

She has used the inheritance she received from her mother, Grace, and her father, Roy, to build several programs with Oklahoma educational institutions to encourage the growth and development of imaginative, creative talents and skills in people of all ages. The biennial $40,000 Thatcher Hoffman Smith prize she has established given at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma is one such effort.