Frankford booster Peggy Hoch
succumbs to cancer

By Diane Prokop
Times Staff Writer

No one cared more about Frankford than Peggy Hoch, who died of lung cancer on Friday at her Tackawanna Street home. Hoch was a high-profile crusader who didn’t just talk about changing her community, she lived it.
When drug dealers took over her street in 1990, the activist confronted them head-on by starting Tackawanna Against Drugs.
Despite death threats, Hoch and other members of the organization staged vigils and angry protest marches, making enough of a fuss to get city agencies to seal drug houses, to condemn blighted properties, to draw police attention to troublesome corridors.
"I refused to get scared," Hoch said in a 1994 Northeast Times article. "I had to get angry. I took my anger and turned it into something positive."
While Hoch had always been active in the community, volunteering at her children’s schools and as a Girl Scout leader, Susan Waldron, the youngest of her nine children, remembers the exact moment that transformed her mother from Frankford resident to Frankford activist.
The two were putting up Christmas decorations in the front window of their home in 1989 when her mother saw a drug deal go down across the street from their house. They knew drugs were in the area. But this was the first time Hoch had seen an open-air deal.
"That was it. She was livid," Waldron said.
That incident and Hoch’s passion for what’s right started what some would call her second career, community activism. Her first was running a home-based bakery when her children were growing up.
According to her daughters, folks came from across the city for their mother’s cakes for weddings, birthdays and other occasions, as well as her Easter candy, which the kids were allowed to help with.
Waldron remembers the time her mother baked a birthday cake for Tony Franklin, a kicker for the Eagles in the early ’80s. They couldn’t get the big cake out the door or window, so Hoch cut the cake in half and then reassembled it.
"She had the gift. She always used her hands," said daughter Sharon Tetlow, as her sister Susan showed a photo of the wedding cake her mother had made for her.
Hoch also had a green thumb, transforming empty lots into gardens that she cared for as long as she was able, according to the daughters. One at Waln and Tackawanna streets was fenced in and had benches. Tetlow remembers how her mother used to love to take neighborhood children there to read to them.
Hoch, 73, was the longtime president of the East Frankford Civic Association — until a November meeting that she’d canceled was held by members, some of whom hatched a movement to vote her out. During her tenure, Hoch represented the organization at meetings of the Frankford Business and Professional Association, Future of Frankford and the 15th Police District Advisory Council.
Capt. Frank Bachmayer, commander of the 15th district, remembers Hoch as a tireless worker for Frankford’s betterment.
"Simply put, she had a passion to improve her community. She worked very hard in her community, worked along with us in the fifteenth, was a volunteer at our curfew center," he said. "In her seventies, she would come out (to the center) every day and stay until three or four in the morning. That shows the passion she had to improve her community."
Bachmayer and officers Sharon Krause and Joanne Kitz, who had worked with Hoch in their role as community relations officers, visited her the day she died.
"It was a sad day. I knew it would be the last time we saw her. She was a good person," Bachmayer said, remembering that some of her last words to him included a humorous order.
"She told me to behave myself."
While the civic election that ousted Hoch and subsequent letters to the editor attacking their mother’s character put her in a deep depression, to the extent that she didn’t want to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas with her family, Hoch still attended the 15th Police District Advisory Council holiday dinner for police officers.
Tacony Civic Association board member Camille Capobianco, who worked alongside Hoch at neighborhood outreaches and marveled at her energy and enthusiasm while working late hours at the 15th District Curfew Center, drove Hoch home after the holiday dinner.
"She was so very sad, so horribly upset about her civic group, that she was just crying the whole time," Capobianco said.
Hoch’s daughter Marge DuBrier believes that the depression shortened her mother’s life and robbed them of precious time with her.
Her son, 1st Lt. Stuart DuBrier, will fly in from Fort Hood, Texas, on Friday. Though Hoch’s daughters say she tried to hold out to see him safe at home with her own eyes, he arrived back in the States from Baghdad the day after his grandmother died.
The family is heartened, however, by the outpouring of community support and phone calls from the 15th Police District, politicians and friends.
One of those friends who worked alongside her at the 15th PDAC was Nancy Doerr. "Peggy was a dynamite person, who would go that extra mile," Doerr said.
Her family often worried that the extra mile would lead her into harm’s way. But Hoch wouldn’t have been persuaded otherwise.
"I worked hard all my life so I didn’t have to be a prisoner in my own home and so that (others) could be free to walk down the avenue and get their checks," DuBrier said her mother told her during one of their recent mother-daughter talks.
Debbie Klak, president of the Historical Society of Frankford, said she can’t recall another member of the Frankford community who was as passionate and committed over the long haul.
"Every time I turned around, she was representing the community. She put her heart and soul in Frankford," Klak said.
Hoch also is survived by her other children: Neva Miller, Theresa Martin, Michael D. Reeves, Glen, Stephen and Jeffrey Reeves, as well as 15 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
A viewing will be held at 8:30 a.m. Saturday at Nulty’s Funeral Home, Frankford Avenue and Church Street. A funeral Mass will follow at 10 a.m. at St. Joachim’s Church, 1527 Church St. ••
Reporter Diane Prokop can be reached at 215-354-3036 or dprokop@phillynews.com