Michael Tisher

I joined OMA in October 2024, and almost right away, Rosemary sent me an email complimenting my work for the university and thanking me for taking this "next step".   I responded by thanking her and complimenting her work as well.   I never heard from her again.    Meanwhile, I first met Rosemary in 1999 when she interviewed me for a faculty position.   Even though I was nervous, she seemed excited to see me and rolled out the red carpet for me as she was showing me all the possible places that I could go to in Asia, various information about UMUC, etc.   Overall, I had such a great time with her and Barbara Crain that day and thus, returned home with good feelings about the whole experience.    Thank you so much, Rosemary, for everything, and am extremely grateful that I could have the best career experience of my life all because of you and Barbara.   Til we all meet again.      

Cheryl R. Powell

Aww…not Rosemary! Where do you begin to describe such an amazing lady? Although my time with UMUC overlapped with Rosemary’s, our paths never crossed. It wasn’t until our reunion in Nashville that I finally met the icon. We clicked immediately and it felt like I’d always known her. The twinkle in her eyes, mischievous grin and adventurous spirit; her lively and intellectual conversations; her down-to-earth approach and voice of reason; her relentless behind-the-scenes research and wealth of UCGC knowledge (which included establishing the archives to support us when she was gone); her dogged pursuit of what was right and strength to challenge authority with directness and diplomacy; and her skillful organization of everyone and everything... all impressed the hell out of me. However, it was her genuine concern for others and warm heart that endeared her to me. How do you not adore someone with such a positive and joyful outlook on life? She championed all of us and masterfully brought out the best in each of us. I am so thankful to have had her in my life. She was our “glue” and our collective UCGC light will not shine as brightly without Rosemary.

Robert Newman

Colleagues.......Rosemary was the co-director (along with Wally Knoche) of the Mediterranean and Benelux for my first UMUC assignment in 1979, which turned out to be a wonderful summer term in Rota, Spain. Gordon Patterson and family were TAs in residence, and also contributed to my assimilation into the overseas teaching world. 

     Rosemary was particularly gifted (it seemed to me) in the care and attention necessary to guarantee a successful "first gig" for someone like myself. She connected me with Neil Foley and Connie Ojile, both of whom had had extended stays in Spain. While housed at Patrick Henry Village (we all were there at one time), I came down with a high fever, and did not yet have a "brown card" to gain access to the "GI Store" in PHV for medical relief! Rosemary and Wally (on separate occasions) both came to the my Q and accompanied me to the AAFES location for necessary medical products, and other forms of human reassurance ("you'll laugh at this one day" kinda thing). 

     I managed (those first two years) to secure lots of Med and Lux assignments to include Rota, Zaragoza, Napoli, Brunssum, Holland, and that AF base on Crete (Iraklion?). I'd like to believe that this was the result of the fabulous rapport I had with Rosemary and Wally, but I suspect that the actual reason was far more mundane, such as local cirricular needs. When back "home" in Heidelberg (I have a beautiful memory of Rosemary's very European pronouciation of words like Heidelberg and Bamberg), the Med/ Lux office always seemed like home! 

     I followed Rosemary's career as she took on the responsibilities associated with OMA, and organization of this very site on which we now chat. She was truly a wonderful soul and mentor for a young academic back in the late Carter/ early Reagan Days. I thank you (pl.) for the opportunity to share my memories of Rosemary Hoffmann. 

PS The pronounciation was something like Heidelbeaeeearg! 

Carol Dolan

Sad news about Rosemary. We crossed paths over the years (i was in Asia 1989 1991, and i Europe 1997-2013). More fecently, i have enjoyed connecting with Rosemary at our OMA Gatherings. I was delighted that she was able to live her final chapter in an amazing life at the Carol Woods Retirement Community in Chapel Hill NC (where i did my Post Doc). Super human being, and will be missed!  Rest well.

Chris Mahoney

Rosemary hired me in 2000.

She was the last person who met me during my UMUC interviews, and she asked me a seemingly simple question about two-way prepositions in German.

I must have provided an answer to her satisfaction because then she asked me if I could teach German in Schwaebisch-Gmuend.

I told her that I had applied for a position for "instructors on military bases in Asia," and that that was my intent.

She informed me that a position at the SG campus had opened up for someone teaching German.

Could I teach German in Germany? Of course.

Then, the SG campus closed.

Rosemary told me that she wanted to offer me a contract with the European Division.

I was in my last year of teaching in Puerto Rico, and I was looking forward to a summer at the beach.

So then I got a message asking me to teach in Vilseck during the summer of 2000. I asked myself what I had done to offend the powers that be to be sent to eastern Bavaria.

So there I went, renting a room at a farm and walking to work every day. 

Well, I spare you the details . . . the epitaph on any Marylander's grave will say . . . "just for a few years" . . . and so here I am in Okinawa . . . just about 25 years later . . . as an "instructor on military bases in Asia" . . .

Thank you, Rosemary . . .

Richard Schumaker

 I was very saddened to learn the news about Rosemary Hoffmann’s passing.  By some quirk of fate, I read the email from the Maryland Portal as I was engaged in a Zoom meeting for a class, Philosophy 100, I originally taught for her and Wally Knoche many years ago.  

I met Rosemary for the first time in late August of 1977.  I was working on one of my Sorbonne theses, living in the Kleine Mantelgasse in Heidelberg and enjoying a quiet life with little to worry about beyond whether to go t0 the General Library of the University of Heidelberg or the Philosophisches Seminar. 

 Someone had suggested that I apply for a teaching position with the University of Maryland on the other side of Heidelberg. Without giving it much thought, I did so and a week later got a call from Bob Speckhard, the English Coordinator.  He interviewed me and said, “I want you to meet Rosemary and Wally,” I have a feeling that you have a lot in common with them.

This was the understatement of the century.

If I remember correctly, this interviewed occurred on a Thursday and early the following week I was on a Medevac plane to Zaragoza, Spain to teach there on a trial basis.  This plane stopped first in Nice and then went to Rota before taking me to Zaragoza, which is in the middle of the Aragon Desert (I think).  Far, far from a German university town.

I worked directly for Rosemary and Wally for four years, getting to know both very well as they guided me through the ropes of becoming a Maryland-in-Europe prof.  Rosemary had so many different personal and professional virtues.  When I started in the Med Dept at Maryland, I had never taught, had not really lived in an English-language environment for almost a decade. 

 She was so careful and understanding; she had a much better knowledge of my needs than I did.  

Over the first six months, she taught me how to heed and follow the departmental processes, how to be patient and think through how to work with the adult working students, and how handle the various challenges of working on a rather isolated, often politically charged USAFE base.  These might seem like simple and obvious skills but to me they were challenging--I had been outside of the US and focused on France and philosophy for so long that I needed a mentor.

As I began to understand the world of adult education in a military environment, I easily figured out how to adapt my own continental philosophical interests to the US adult ed program. Here again, Rosemary was incredibly helpful.  As a pedagogue she had unique skills—stimulating and imaginative but extremely disciplined. As someone had no discipline outside my academic interests, these weren’t easy lessons for me.   This was a long time ago now and the cultural differences between the US and Europe were wider then than they are now.  Rosemary was a gifted academic with a PhD in German; she had a very good sense of who I was and how to help me bridge this gap cultural.  After about a year of teaching basic lower and upper-level courses, she began to work with me on the creation of new seminars and 3sh courses. By the time this process started, I had moved from Zaragoza to Naples and then on to San Vito Air Station near Brindisi.  The mission there was a cutting-edge USAFE intel project. My students there were mostly Air Force and Navy intelligence analysists and linguists; they were part of the global US intel community and had served at NSA in Maryland, Misawa, Japan and several places in the UK and Germany.  These were exceptional students who were yearning for challenging courses which would help them develop as students and humans.  

Rosemary understood this situation well and encouraged me to develop new courses and teach ones in Shakespeare, American Lit, French and other similar ones.  She often flew down to either Naples or Brindisi and we not only worked on our Maryland projects but had really interesting trips in the Italian countryside.  She was incredibly curious and open; she loved meeting the Italian agricultural workers in these areas.  We would get ourselves invited into their unique Trulli homes and be offered meals.  Experiences of a lifetime!!

Rosemary and I met up again professionally when I transferred from La Maddalena in Sardinia to Hahn, AB in the Hünsruck region of Germany.  The world was changing and this decision for me was very significant.  Rosemary had moved from Wally’s assistant in the Mediterranean area to the directorship of part of part of Germany—I forget the exact title.  

Hahn AB was a crucial part of the Reagan military build-up in the early 1980s.  It was the first base in Europe to use the new multi-role fighter, the F-16, and had a nuclear storage area as well as one of the important AF intel units.  This meant working with multiple services, a very complex student body, and an expanding student body.  Because of its geopolitical importance, it also became a site of political protests and terrorist attacks. 

For Rosemary, this meant that she was responsible for one of the most important university programs in Europe—or anywhere really.  Our professional relationship changed during this time. 

 Another administrator probably would not have grasped the complexity of her new assignment or grasped the importance of finding the right personnel to teach and manage the program.   As my professional relationship with Rosemary deepened, so did my understanding of teaching in general and my own professional responsibilities in particular.  I still taught experimental classes over several academic areas but the need in the Hahn world was for something else—someone who could handle the high volume of students and also figure out practices that would help this student population.  In conjunction with the field reps, Patrick Pryor and Bill Badger, and the ESO, Mike Koster, we devised ingenious approaches to teaching classes that suited these students with very odd schedules and incredibly demanding military exercises that closed the bases down for days and weeks—thus cutting the students off from their classes.  I was often the lead prof to teach these “trick” sessions, to trouble shoot them and prepare them for general use. 

Rosemary was so empathetic, intelligent, and demanding in these discussions and meeting.  These traits were all but absent from my personality but little by little I got better; what one of the protest magazines once called “Militär-Heimat Hunsrück” despite all the stress, demonstrations, and dangers, Rosemary developed an incredible program.  Even now, I receive emails from our former students who always express appreciate for those classes.  As they tend to say, “We realized that you were there for us.”

After a while, Rosemary decided to return to the US to pursue one of her deep loves—architecture.  The changes in the US presence in Europe continued:  wars, more terrorism, many huge demonstrations, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the “drawdown” of troops.  Hahn AB closes but I moved to the nearby Bitburg AB and Spangdahlem.  Technology was changing global education and for many reasons Maryland in Europe was at the forefront of this.  This shift in teaching possibilities led me to accept a position at the home campus in Adelphi, MD.  After decades as a UMUC prof, seldom visiting the US, and always more interested in continental Europe than “elsewhere,” I found myself arriving at Maryland’s US HQ as an administrator.  

As I was being shown my office, one of the first people to greet me was my friend and former supervisor, Rosemary Hoffmann.  She was modest and kind: “Do you remember me?”  I started laughing—"Of course,” I said, “and started into “Do you remember…?”

For about a decade our offices were a few meters from each other.  Both of us liked being back in the US—we liked the DC-NYC corridor and felt that the institution needed our European expertise.  It was also interesting to have contact with “USM,” the University System of Maryland.  This gave us a good sense of how UMUC fit into the Maryland master plan.

During this time, Rosemary, in addition to working in university administration, taught German and did very important work in adapting language studies to the new online methods.  

I have been typing for about an hour from the Marriott Downtown Hotel in Philadelphia where I am attending a Northeast Modern Language convention and participating in a political demonstration at the Philadelphia City Hall.  It is time for Rosemary’s Memorial Service.  I was shocked and saddened to learn that she had passed; she had such a deep influence on my life, and I can’t think of anyone I admired more.  I had planned on sharing some of the kind and helpful things she did for me in my first few years back in the US but ran out of time.  

Many of us are at once deeply saddened to think she’s no longer with us and infinitely grateful to have known such an intelligent, kind, and curious person.  

John Golembe

Rosemary Hoffmann was not only the co-founder of the Overseas Marylanders Association (OMA) but was also its savior.  Indeed, without her devoted and tireless efforts, OMA probably would not exist at all.

Rosemary’s co-founder was T. Benjamin Massey, UMGC’s long-time president, whose faculty and administrative roots were also in Europe and Asia.  President Massey took the lead in 1996 by announcing the opening of OMA.  When university support vanished after Dr. Massey’s 1998 retirement, Rosemary kept OMA alive by holding gatherings in the Washington area and staying in touch with colleagues around the world. Meetings brought together former overseas faculty and staff to share experiences uncommon in the rest of academia.  Rosemary was also OMA’s first chairperson once our organization got back on its feet just over a decade ago.  During that time she also established the OMA website, which continues to serve as our worldwide communications bond.

I knew and worked with Rosemary for more than 45 years.  The last time other OMA members and I spent time with her was at the November 2024 gathering in San Diego.  Though she must have known by then that time was short, she was the fully engaged, high-spirited friend that we’ve loved for years.  She departed even the latest night-cap gatherings with a smile on her face to rest up for the next day’s events.  Godspeed, Rosemary, and thank you so very much.

Pam Massey

Too many wonderful adjectives to describe Rosemary but clearly one of a kind.  Had spoken to her right before she headed to San Diego and she seemed to be excited about her next chapter in life at Carol Woods.  
Her service spoke highly of the person we all came to love...thank you Doug Lemons for being there.  
She will be missed!

Guy Moyer

     This happening on the heels of previously losing Gary Laugel has been a tough pill to swallow, and a sobering reminder to me of our mortality. (I’m now in tears while typing this.) In my experience, UMUC was overall a very positive place with very positive faculty interactions which caused us to maintain solid respect for each other. That in turn has caused UMUC/UMGC to always have a strong place in my heart, and I’m sure the hearts of many others.
     Rosemary hired me to work in Vladivostok, Russia, and her subsequent observation of my teaching there resulted in one very good suggestion. Rosemary was also in my classroom, perhaps a year earlier, when I briefly spoke of the life of Abraham Lincoln due to its relevance to a writing activity the class had then worked on. I then mentioned to the class that because Abraham Lincoln was himself a hard worker and well acquainted with work, he was loathe to overlook the offense of slavery. Those lines then seemed to resonate with Rosemary, perhaps due to her parental ties to the United Church of Christ in Raleigh, NC, which appears to have a definite bent toward issues of social justice. May those ties and all other edifying ones now bless Rosemary. And may we all be blessed to recognize and call upon those things that would best prepare us for eternity, and therewith find if not also cause to flourish what Lincoln, while then imploring the South in his First Inaugural Address, described as “the better angels of our nature.”

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Jn. 3:16

Julie Porosky (Hamlin)

I’m fortunate to have known Rosemary since she first joined the European Division HQ staff in 1976, and her passing has been hard for me to absorb. I wish, before it was too late, I had found an occasion to say to her, “Rosemary, you are amazing.” As a virtual attendee at the memorial service held for her in NC a few weeks ago, I heard confirmation that her friends and family members thought so too. Their comments reflected the many Rosemary-isms I have noticed over the years: her quiet way, her exquisite sense of humor, her intellect, her curiosity about all things, her generosity.

John Golembe’s tribute captured what OMA owes her for its very existence. Rosemary was deeply embedded in UMUC for decades, wearing several different hats, and I believe UMUC was deeply embedded in her, too. She was one of its true animating spirits.

Rosemary dressed with a rare creative genius, and a love of color. She had a talent for discovering cool shops and out-of-the-way places to buy the lovely pieces she wore with such flair. When I last saw her in San Diego in November, she had purchased a new accessory at a shop around the corner from our hotel and, taking me aside, urged me to check it out. “I might even make another trip there before I leave,” I recall her saying.

Rock on, Rosemary.