Marion Crooker Schmidt (Hoopes) Ducey, known affectionately to her friends as Sissie, passed away peacefully on March 11, 2019 surrounded by her family in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. She was 98.
Sissie was born November 14, 1920 in Buffalo, New York to Hans Schmidt, Jr. and Erma Genevieve Crooker. Along with her brother, Hans Schmidt III, she was raised in Buffalo and spent her summers on the family farm in nearby Derby, New York. She attended The Oldfields School in Glencoe, Maryland and spent a year abroad in France during her secondary school years. Afterwards, she was employed as a photographer for the Buffalo Evening News and worked briefly for the paper as a reporter.
In 1943, Sissie married Townsend (Tim) Walter Hoopes, then a lieutenant in the Marine Corps, and the couple subsequently had two children. After World War II, the family moved first to Washington, DC and then briefly to Prairie Village, Kansas, a Kansas City suburb, before settling permanently in New Canaan, Connecticut. Sissie's marriage to Tim ended in divorce. In 1978, she married John F. Ducey, Jr. of New Canaan and Northeast Harbor, Maine. Together, the couple traveled abroad and enjoyed an active social life in Connecticut, Maine and Hobe Sound, Florida. In 2000, they moved to Vicar’s Landing in Ponte Vedra Beach. Mr. Ducey died in 2007, at which time Sissie sold her last Connecticut home after 52 years in New Canaan.
Sissie was a vivacious, loving and a very active woman. As a young girl, she joyously rode horses along the bluffs above Lake Erie. Later, she played tennis, took up golf, and was named captain of the women's golf team at the Country Club of New Canaan. She was an avid, accomplished bridge player. She was also a strong, intelligent decision-maker and business woman who founded her own interior design company, Circle Three, serving residential and commercial clients in Fairfield County, Connecticut and New York City.
Sissie was predeceased by her husband, John F. Ducey, Jr. and her brother, Hans Schmidt III. She is succeeded by her two sons, Townsend Hoopes III and his long-time significant other, Sibley Mahler of Ponte Vedra Beach; Peter S. Hoopes and his wife, Terri Hoopes of Denver, Colorado; granddaughter Sara Lynn Hoopes of Evanston, Illinois; and grandson Hunter Townsend Hoopes of Des Moines, Iowa.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation on behalf of Sissie to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
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