Joseph Christian James Hochreiter, Sr.

Our family is privileged to tell you about a man to whom life owed little else after 101 years. Born on July 19, 1922 to Christian Theodore Hochreiter and Mary Gorman in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, he is predeceased by his first wife, Mary Clare (Boyer), and his three sisters, Claire Hochreiter, Mary Keough (Bill), and Joan Brenner (Cliff).

He told stories of a resourceful and mischievous childhood, with a particular love of baseball (often played as stickball) and soccer.  He coached a successful amateur soccer team as a teenager, and told of the kindness of Negro-league players in the City who supplied used gear so he and his friends could play real baseball. He shared his dad’s love of deep-sea fishing, and developed his own love for golf, serving as a caddie at Cobbs Creek Golf Club where the woman professional there taught him the game.

After graduating Murrell Dobbins HS, Joe worked as a linotype operator and sheet-metal worker at the Naval Aircraft Factory. He volunteered to enter WWII in 1942 and served as a Petty Officer at Naval Air Station Port Leyute, in Morocco until his discharge in 1946. There he was a tail gunner on anti-Axis submarine patrol in a Catalina-PBY airplane. A favorite photo from that time has him using a government-issued Harley Davidson Ua-Flathead to courier documents on base.

After discharge, he worked at the US Army Signal Corps in Philadelphia where he met the love of his life, Mary Clare Boyer. After a first date in 1950, they wed in 1953, bought a ranch house in Levittown PA, and produced two sons, Joe Jr. and John. The family was active in St. Michael’s parish and volunteered many years at the annual ‘Saint Mike’s fair’. Joe remained a federal civil servant with the US Army his entire career, initially in Philadelphia and later at Fort Monmouth, as a Computer Systems Analyst. He retired as a Special Projects Officer in 1978.

A life-long runner, after retirement Joe remained active with volunteer work. He became the Sexton of St. Michael’s Church for several years, and when Joe Jr. started the Bucks County Red Cross Homeless Shelter in 1985, Joe Sr. volunteered to be its first Operations Manager. He was awarded the Red Cross Chapter Chairman’s Award for volunteer service in 1986, and continued to serve the residents of the shelter into the early 1990s.

Joe cared for Mary Clare during 5-years of cancer treatments, until her passing in 1991. Her loss was devastating. Friends eventually decided that Joe needed to date, and as a life-lesson on the power of love and rebirth, Joe met and fell in love with Dolores Lenio. They wed at St. Michael’s in 1994, after which they built a new life together in Richboro, PA. Joe spent his time reading books on world religion and philosophy, and expanding his personal advocacy for those to whom society slighted. A remarkably progressive thinker for his era, he served as a role model for his sons, their wives, their children and grandchildren, extended family and their friends.

After 29 years in his second marriage, and a few days after his 101st birthday, Joe succumbed to an intense, but mercifully short bout of dementia on July 24, 2023. He leaves behind his second wife (Dolores); his sons Joe Jr. (Eileen Wachtman) and John (Toni); his grandchildren Justin (Celia), Misty (James), Richard (Michele), Erich (Daniella), and Kristen (Zack); and great-grandchildren Chloe, Michael, James, Jaden and Kaitlyn. He also leaves behind his sister-in-law Pattiann Boyer, and beloved nieces and nephews of the Bennett, Boyer, Keough, and Brenner families.

Relatives and friends are invited to attend his Funeral Mass on Monday, July 31, 2023 at 11:00 a.m. at St. Vincent de Paul Church, 654 Hatboro Road, Richboro, PA. A Visitation will be held at the Church from 10:00am–11:00 a.m. Arrangements are under the direction of the Wade Funeral Home, Bristol Borough.

Should you desire to make a memorial gift in Joe’s name and certainly in lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Bucks County Emergency Homeless Shelter, now operated by Family Service Association of Bucks County ( www.fsabc.org ).