Alice M Hoffman

Alice Hoffman, 1974 speaking at National Council of Senior Citizens

It is with great sadness that we announced the passing of Alice M. Hoffman, who died in Tucson, Arizona on Dec. 26, 2024, age 95. Alice was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. June 17, 1929 to mother Florence Crane and father Nelson H. Cruikshank. Her father was a Methodist minister who later directed the AFL-CIO Department of Social Security. He was a chief architect of the Medicare bill and served as Counselor on Aging to U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Alice inherited her father’s commitment to improving people’s lives through organization and activism.

Alice became a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) at the age of 14. She graduated from Quaker-affiliated schools with a high school degree from Westtown (where she met her first husband Elbert W. Russell, later divorced) and then a B.A. in History from Earlham College in 1951. In 1965 she earned a Master’s degree in History from Penn State University, and in 1982 completed a doctorate in Education at Temple University. From 1966-86, while working in the Pennsylvania State University Department of Labor Studies, she began collecting taped recollections of union members for the Penn State archives, becoming a pioneer in the developing field of oral history. In 1975, she was elected the first woman president of the Oral History Association, later winning the 1985 Forrest Pogue Award for Excellence in Oral History. She served on the editorial boards of both the Oral History Review and Labor Studies Journal, and was a co-founder of the Pennsylvania Labor History Society. At Penn State, she taught courses in labor history, and industrial and labor relations, and directed and taught workers’ education programs. She authored numerous articles and book chapters on labor and oral history.

While at Penn State, Alice met her second husband, Howard S. Hoffman, (1925-2006) a professor of psychology, who later taught at Bryn Mawr College. In partnership with Howard, she edited “The Cruikshank Chronicles: Anecdotes, Stories and Memoirs of a New Deal Liberal” based on interviews with her father. Alice and Howard also collaborated on “Archives of Memory: A Soldier Recalls World War II,” a study of the reliability of memory based on Howard’s war recollections.

For the Philadelphia celebration of the Bicentennial (1976), Alice obtained a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, and served as a principal consultant for the Philadelphia Central Labor Council to develop and build a museum on the history of American labor.

In 1988, she became Director of the newly-formed Dislocated Workers Unit in the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, helping re-employ thousands of workers laid off after many Pennsylvania industries moved offshore or down-sized during the 1980s. In 1990, she joined an international U.S. Labor Department program that sent experts from several state labor departments to develop dislocated worker job training programs in Poland.

She was a member of the Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Philadelphia chapter, and served on CLUW’s board.

Upon her retirement in 1991, Alice and Howard moved to the Quadrangle, a senior community in Haverford, Pa, and Alice later served on the Quadrangle Board. She taught courses at Bryn Mawr College, and helped set up a commemorative marker for the 1921-38 Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers. She continued her long-time membership at Merion Friends Meeting, serving as clerk, and worked as a docent at Arch Street Friends Meeting.

Alice and Howard raised six children in a blended family and is survived by five of those children, nine grand-children, and one great grand-son.

Alice will be remembered for her joyful laughter, love of people, singing and story-telling, and her commitment to, as John Lewis said, ‘making good trouble.’ During her productive life, she tirelessly advocated for workers, ensuring their stories were not forgotten, and for championing peace, and racial, gender, and social justice. As Alice used to sing, ‘Solidarity forever, the union makes us strong.’

Memorial donations may be made to any of the following organizations:

Merion Friends Meeting, https://www.merionfriends.org/

American Friends Service Committee https://afsc.org

Coalition of Labor Union Women, Philadelphia http://www.phillycluw.org/