The days leading up to Christmas are busy for Murray and Sharon Hoffman of Williams Lake.
In the month of December, the Hoffmans are involved with various concerts, if there’s a show on at Williams Lake Studio Theatre and helping collect warm clothes and food for the community’s vulnerable.
They both perform each year at the Annual Tuba Christmas Concert, in memory of John Sykes, which is a fundraiser for the Salvation Army.
Sharon sings with Quintet Plus and Murray plays trumpet with the Christmas Brass Ensemble.
She also plays ukulele and sings at seniors’ homes with her friend Denise Deschene, five times a month.
“During the pandemic Denise learned to play the ukulele. I just love playing with her,” Sharon said.
Murray is a long-time member of the Williams Lake Community Band, which also performs a Christmas concert each year.
Recently, Sharon played the fairy godmother in Williams Lake Studio Theatre’s production of Cinderella which ran Nov. 29 to Dec. 10.
During an interview in November at their home, Sharon showed off a magic wand Murray created to enhance her fairy godmother costume.
“The ladies doing props bedazzled it,” she said. “It’s quite beautiful. I’ve loved being the fairy godmother. It’s very fun.”
She also volunteers with the Cariboo Festival Society and said several of the youth who do vocals at the festival were in the play and doing an amazing job.
Williams Lake Studio Theatre has been a big part of her life.
She has acted in at least 30 plays and helped out with just as many behind the scenes.
Murray has helped build sets or been in the orchestra pit as well.
His favourite role of Sharon’s was as the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz.
He described how Sharon crawled over the audience’s chairs from the back to make her way to the stage for her entrance, saying “get out of the way, if you please.”
Through the Community Arts Council of Williams Lake, of which they are both directors, Sharon has organized a giving tree since 2017.
Gently-used or new warm clothes are placed on a tree downtown to spread warmth for anyone in need.
The tree is near the Downtown BIA office and this year the Williams Lake Spinners and Weavers have donated some items, Sharon said, noting there are donation bins for the giving tree at the library.
Originally from Vancouver, the Hoffmans met when they were students at Simon Fraser University.
Murray got a job in the fall of 1978 at Williams Lake Secondary School teaching sciences. Later he moved to Columneetza and taught there for 12 years.
He also coached volleyball.
After many years of teaching he started taking a master’s degree in psychology to improve his way of connecting with the students and being more understanding of the baggage they brought with them as adolescents.
A few months after he completed the degree he was asked to fill a counselling position at the school.
Hesitant at first, he consulted with Sharon Smith who was already a school counsellor, and agreed to take the position for the rest of the term.
“I just loved it, I really did,” he said of counselling. “Because I’d taught for 20 years already I knew a lot of the resource people in the community.”
Every once in a while he will be walking into a store in town and will run into a former student.
“They’ll say ‘hi Mr. Hoffman,’” Murray said. And give him a hug, Sharon added.
For the rest of his career he worked as a counsellor.
Sharon’s teaching career began in Maple Ridge.
They were dating while Murray started his job in Williams Lake and in 1979 she made the move from the Lower Mainland.
She taught at Cataline, Glendale and 150 Mile elementary schools. As a child she knew she wanted to be a teacher, or a ballerina, she said chuckling.
Music has always been a part of both of their lives. Murray started playing trumpet in Grade 6 through a school band program and never looked back.
When Murray arrived in Williams Lake, Rocco Catalano has just been hired as a band teacher for School District 27.
Catalano and another secondary band teacher, Bill Wood, decided to form a community band.
“I got involved but I was so busy that my commitment was off and on,” Murray recalled. “It was probably four or five years before I went back with the community band.”
Around 1984, the Williams Lake Stampede Association decided it wanted to host a black tie event to celebrate the Stampede royalty ball with a dance band.
“There was the community band but no dance band, and Bill Crook, who was always our big promoter, said we could probably put something together,” Murray recalled.
It was just before Christmas and they bought copies of a book featuring music by the likes of Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey.
They started practicing and decided there were four pieces they should be able to play.
“We learned the four songs and the idea was we were going to open up right after the dinner at the black tie affair.”
Catalano was conducting the group, and once they began playing the first song at the event, the crowd jumped up and started dancing.
“Everyone is up on the dance floor and they are all excited. We play the second song, we play the third song, play the fourth song and we say ‘OK, that’s all we got’.”
The crowd would not let them stop, so the band members looked at each other and played the four songs over one more time.
Hooked, they decided it was fun and they should do it more often, which they did, eventually naming themselves the Cariboo Gold Dance Band, still performing today.
Sharon was fortunate, she said, to have Lloyd Arntzen, a jazz clarinetist, folk singer and soprano saxophonist, as a choir director in elementary school in West Vancouver.
She also took piano lessons, which she has appreciated more as an adult.
“I was a very shy kid and really trying hard to be cool and it simply did not work. In high school the cool kids did not go out for theatre and by Grade 12 I wanted to try theatre.”
Her first role was a small part in The Music Man and she loved it so much she kicked herself for not starting theatre when she was in Grade 8.
“That’s where I belonged. I loved it.”
The Hoffmans have a daughter, Morgan, who lives with her family in Kamloops and a son Brandon, who lives in Williams Lake with his wife Devon.
Today Murray and Sharon live in the third home they built themselves on Fox Mountain and enjoy keeping busy. With no plans to leave, they said Williams Lake is home.
“We are happy here,” they said.
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