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A mother's influence
PICTURED: From left: Tom with his mother and father. Anne Hobart with her two sons, Tom and Charles. Tom was called to active duty in the U.S. Army Reserve during the Berlin crisis of 1961. Elizabeth and Catherine sit next to their dad while Thomas Y. Hobart III is on his lap.
Tom Hobart is used to challenges. He learned to handle loss at the age of 12, when his father died from complications of tuberculosis. "My father was a high-level engineer, and back then we lived at the top of society," he said. His mother was left to raise two boys on her own, until her remarriage to Charles Molloy, a pharmacist.
If not for his mother's encouragement, Hobart would have never become a teacher.
"Everyone assumed I'd be an engineer like my dad," said Hobart, recalling some of the coursework was so against his nature and such a struggle that he decided to join the Air Force with a buddy. Both passed the first physical and went off to Massachusetts, but Hobart's poor eyesight failed the second physical.
"They had a big party for me when I left and I remember feeling like I was just sneaking back in to Buffalo," he said. He was proud to later go on to serve in the U.S. Army Reserve.
He got two jobs, one in the circulation department of the Buffalo Evening News and the other at Bethlehem Steel. Yet his mother insisted he continue his education.
"So the only reason I went to Buffalo State was to please her, and it wasn't until I practice-taught that I realized, I really liked this and I can see doing this."
After earning his degree, Hobart began working in 1959 as an industrial arts teacher in Buffalo where his boyish appearance had him frequently mistaken for a student.
Although he only made $3,500 a year as a teacher, he agreed with the prevailing thinking that unions and teachers did not belong together. Before long, he changed his mind. "I remember attending a board meeting where we were asking for a $100 raise.
"The school board president got up and said, 'That wasn't enough. You deserve a $1,000 raise. But since we can't even afford the $100, we're going to show our appreciation.'
"Then they all stood up and applauded. That's when I realized teachers needed to join together and get collective bargaining rights."
He was sporting a Buddy Holly look when he enrolled in the graduate program at Canisius College and met Dorothy Gay, an English teacher who says she "loved those black glasses. He looked so intellectual and cute." The two married in 1963.
"I thought we would just have a normal life, like so many other teachers who marry each other," said "Dottie" Hobart. Their family grew as first Elizabeth, then Catherine, Thomas Y. Hobart III and Jennifer were born.
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