Vickie L. Hockersmith

Vickie Lynn Hockersmith (née Brooks) lived a remarkable life. Born in Beppu, Japan as Nobuko Takemura, to Ryoji and Takeko Takemura, she was adopted about a year after her birth by Edgar Wayne and Frances Jean Brooks. The records show that the Takemuras approved of the adoption not because of their own indigence or lack of love for their daughter, but because of the immense love the Brooks demonstrated for her and the Takemura’s sympathy to the Brooks’s struggles to conceive on their own. Few are so lucky to have their parents’ love enshrined in pen in a legal document.

Vickie then accompanied her new family across the entire globe, to Sumter, South Carolina, where she spent her childhood. At the age of five she was naturalized as an American Citizen, and recounted for the rest of her days the delight of being sworn in while sitting on the Judge’s lap.

Vickie was an only child, and quickly thrust into helping around the home and caring for her parents, beginning a lifelong practice of taking care of her family and loved ones above all else.

She and her family moved from South Carolina to south central Pennsylvania when Vickie was in middle school. It’s while attending Big Spring Middle School that she met the man she would marry, Rick Hockersmith. She graduated from Shippensburg University with a degree in psychology in 1980. Vickie and Rick married on Valentine’s Day 1981 at the Carlisle Barracks. Vickie began a medical coding career at Harrisburg Hospital and Carlisle Regional Medical Center, where she was employed for 25 years.

In the fall of 1986, they welcomed their first child, Jaclyn “Jackie” Rae Hockersmith, and exactly five years later, to the day, welcomed their second child, Daniel Robert Hockersmith. Jackie and Dan were beloved by their mother, who was singularly devoted to them.

The Hockersmith family remained in Carlisle for over two decades, until 2011, when Vickie had the opportunity to advance her career by taking a position as MIS Managers of Coding/CDI at Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital, bringing her and Rick to Plattsburgh, New York, where she lived for the rest of her days.

Vickie’s pragmatic can-do spirit and whip-smart sense of humor helped her to bring smiles to all she knew. She cared deeply for her friends and family, and was a humble self-sacrificing woman who would have given you the shirt off her back—though admittedly probably with a wry comment and a teasing wink.

Though she was only sixty-six years old when she passed, she lived each of those years to the fullest. She died peacefully with friends and her children by her side, and was beautifully cared for by her colleagues at CVPH.

She is survived by her husband, Rick, and her children, Jackie and Daniel, and her cats, Fuzzy and Shadow. In lieu of flowers or gifts, those wishing to honor Vickie’s memory are invited to make a donation in her name to CVPH (uvmhealth.org/give-back/) or Adoptees for Justice (adopteesforjustice.org).