My Grandmother's Ring Lecture by Laurie Bricker

Commemorating the 125th anniversary of the 1900 Storm, Laurie Bricker will discuss her book, My Grandmother’s Ring, a memoir of her grandmother’s life. Lorraine Isaacs Hofeller, a second generation “BOI”, is considered to be the last survivor of the 1900 Galveston Storm when she passed away in 2002 at the age of 106 ½. The memoir discusses the many chapters of her life, having lived in Galveston from 1896, graduating from Ball High School as president of her senior class, and through the early 1900’s of the post storm city.

From her own perspective of having lived a happy and enriched life but “nothing remarkable,” my grandmother, Lorraine Rey Isaacs Hofeller, my “Meme,” lived a full 106 and a half magical years through three centuries, experienced two world wars and countless other wars, lived through the Great Depression, positioned herself as a trailblazer long before women were considered leaders—and is remembered as the last survivor of the 1900 storm in Galveston, Texas.

Her remarkable life story, as seen through her violet eyes, and interpreted by me—her youngest grandchild, her namesake, Laurie Kuper Bricker––is a collection of tales of wonderment as Lorraine embraced each day of her life from February of 1896 through July of 2002.

Her incredible engagement ring, mailed to her from Buffalo, New York, by Sigmar Hofeller in 1918, accompanied her through the journey of youth to old age and beyond.