Viola Joyce Hockett

Viola Joyce Hockett passed away peacefully, with family at her side, at Bee Hive Homes Assisted Living in Missoula, Montana on May 26, 2015, at the age of 85. Joyce was born on Sept. 15, 1929 in Livingston, MT, the first child of Jay Leslie Gleason and Mary Ailene (Stanton) Gleason. She was raised in Livingston, later joined by sister Martha and brother Jay Jr. She graduated as valedictorian of her class from Park County High School in 1947, then enrolled at Montana State College (now MSU-Bozeman), graduating in 1951 with a degree in nursing. She taught nursing in Great Falls, MT for a year before marrying Robert Hockett, a Havre, MT farmer (and later N. MT College teacher) whom she had met at college, on October 11, 1952. For the next 20 years she resided on the Havre family farmstead, homemaking and raising five children, who survive her. In 1972, Joyce returned to MSU and in 1974 obtained two master's degrees; one in Psych Nursing and one in Education/Counseling. She then left Montana for Oregon, which she had fallen in love with while living there 8 years before while Bob pursued his education master's degree. Bob and Joyce later divorced. For the next four years, living in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro, Joyce taught Psych Nursing at the Univ. of Oregon Health Sciences Center. Having further ambitions, Joyce then applied to a highly competitive doctoral program at USC in Los Angeles, and was accepted. She spent the next six years in LA working on her doctorate, and in 1984 earned her PhD in Sociology – Marriage & Family Counseling. She then eagerly returned to Portland, OR, where she opened a private counseling practice. She later worked for the Multnomah County YMCA doing family counseling, retiring in 1990 due to disability. She moved to the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego, close to where her sister Martha was now living, and resided there for the next 22 years. In 2012, increasing disability caused her to move to Oswego Springs Assisted Living in Portland, then in 2013 she moved to the Care & Comfort Home in Havre, Montana, and in 2015 to Bee Hive Homes Assisted Living in Missoula, both times to be nearer to her children.

Joyce is survived by her five children, Melanie (Joe) Ruby of Helena, MT, Lorrie Hockett and Jeff (Kayleen) Hockett, both of Havre, Kathie (Abdul) Kadri of Missoula and Red Lodge, MT, and Sherrie Hockett (Wayne Sonnichsen) of Sunnyside, WA. She is also survived by grandchildren Greg (Jenny) Strandberg of Missoula, Shayne(Ami) Guttery of Havre, and Michele(Brendan) Hockett-Cooper of Austin, TX, step-grandchildren Zane (Julie) Gibbons of Bellingham, WA and Lacey (Tony) Gibbons of Seattle, WA, by great-grandchildren Paul Strandberg, Sadie and Jessa Guttery, Kestin, Addison and Tate Gibbons, and by sister and brother-in-law Martha and John Bryan of Portland, and brother and sister-in-law Jay Gleason Jr. of Bozeman, MT and Dotti Gleason of Denver, as well as by former brothers-in-law Eugene (Sharon) Hockett of Billings, MT and Roy (Mabel) Hockett of Helena, and numerous nieces and nephews. Joyce was preceded in death by her parents, her former husband, Bob, and grandsons Daniel Hockett and Tyler Hockett.

One of Joyce's favorite activities during her years in Hillsboro and LA was taking out her tent trailer and camping with daughter Sherrie at the many parks along the Oregon and California coasts, and many weekends were spent this way. She made many return trips to Montana to visit her parents, children and families. She also visited Hawaii, Texas, Canada and Mexico. One of her more notable accomplishments after she returned to Portland in 1984 was buying a "fixer-upper" house in southwest Portland and, acting as her own contractor, over two and a half years, while working full time and dealing with the onset of neuropathy, Joyce totally redid the house, doing a lot of the work herself, and made it into a truly lovely and unique residence. It made her extremely sad to have to sell and leave it in 1990. In her retirement years, Joyce was a crossword puzzle solver extraordinaire, and also created a vast array of needlework and other crafts, thereby leaving many wonderful items for her family to enjoy in her memory. She passed along her love of and talent for needlecrafts to all four of her daughters. She was a voracious reader, making weekly trips to the Lake Oswego library. She was an excellent cook, making wonderful family meals that all her children remember with fondness, and she enjoyed summer evenings in her Lake Oswego house having dinner on her patio with the fountain running. Joyce was very proud of all her children's successes in life, and we were proud of hers, and of her strength and ability to handle her mobility disability so well in her later years, and we will miss her very much.

Cremation has taken place, and no services are planned.







Read Viola Hockett's Obituary and Guestbook on www.missoulafuneralhomes.com.