Susan Arlene Short Hohmann

Susan Arlene Short Hohmann came into this world on October 9, 1956 at St Mary’s Hospital in Port Arthur, Texas. She was the second and last child of Patricia Ann Prewitt and Joseph Paul Short, although previous and subsequent unions of her parents provided her a total of five siblings. She was her father’s “little princess” and also acquired the nick names Black-eyed Susan and Susie Q.

Most of her early years were spent in the Golden Triangle of Texas, first with her parents, then with her father and step-mother. Susan’s father was an avid outdoorsman. Since his job took him away from home for several weeks at a time, he spent much of his time off work taking his children camping and fishing, often with their uncles and older cousins. Susan often spoke of going crabbing and fishing, and that her father, while not liking to eat fish, sure knew how to cook them. Her father was an excellent cook and that was one of the traits she inherited from him.

Life along the Gulf Coast brought its own adventures. Susan was a member of the Campfire Girls for a while and also took ballet. At home, Susan and her siblings would catch crawfish in the ditches after the frequent rainstorms, play airplane in the winds of nearby hurricanes, (until the wind became too dangerous), and playing in the mists of the trucks spraying mosquito poison. The amount of time Susan spent swatting mosquitoes seems to show that DDT did little harm to either the mosquitoes or the children.

Susan’s father worked as an engineer on tugboats and sometimes the family was able to wave at her dad’s boat as it passed by on the Intercoastal Waterway.

Around the age of 12, Susan and her brother Mike, unable to get along with their stepmother, decided to move from Bridge City to live with their mother in Austin. It was a difficult decision for Susan as she dearly loved her daddy and it was a tearful parting.

Life in Austin was quite different than along the coast and Susan struggled to find her niche in life. In 1985 she joined her mother at the IRS in the Data Conversion Branch, entering the data from tax returns into the IRS computers. Although not a great typist, she excelled at organizing and soon moved into Work Leader and management positions.

In late 1989, Susan moved to the Document Perfection Branch to be a second level manager. It was there that she met her future husband, Harvey Hohmann. Although from different backgrounds, they soon discovered they shared many traits. She and Harvey were married on July 27, 1991 at a friend’s home in Wimberley, Texas. After less than a year of living in Austin, the couple moved to Wimberley.

But they did not move alone. On April 13, 1992, a son, Stephen Dietrich Hohmann, “God’s miracle” as Susan described him, was born. His pending arrival was the main reason Susan wanted to leave Austin for a small town environment.

Tiring of managing, Susan began to work in the Statistic of Income unit, a job that was often as dull as the name sounds. It was here that she was once told “They removed those instructions because they know that we know to do that”, which is an excellent example of the bureaucrat mindset.

However, it wasn’t long before Susan was chosen to attend the workshops where those instructions were written. This began an involvement in instructing and producing training materials that would last the rest of Susan’s IRS career.

Though an introvert by nature, Susan enjoyed teaching. She taught many classes at the IRS. Susan was such a good instructor that she helped teach other IRS employees how to be instructors and once even helped instruct a class on how to teach others to teach.

Susan also spent several years leading the Education ministry at her church, The Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in Wimberley, where she ran the Sunday School and Vacation Bible School.

During the years before Stephen reached school age, Susan and her family took many short vacations while school was in session to avoid the summer crowds. They traveled mostly inside Texas to museums, parks, historic sites, and several zoos, but also to Carlsbad Caverns. They often camped and went through a progression of ever larger tents. Susan enjoyed seeing new places and these trips gave her many happy memories.

In 1998 Susan moved to another work area, the Accounts Maintenance Unit. She loved this work because there she could actually help taxpayers. She soon became a training coordinator not just for her unit, but for the entire department. She also did special projects for her manager to clarify work instructions and was named to the AMU course development project. Susan proved so valuable that the Learning and Education Division would often specifically request that she be included in these projects.

These projects usually took place at other IRS sites and often last for at least two weeks. Harvey and Stephen would often join Susan over one weekend. This allowed Susan and her family to do things they might not otherwise have ever done, like visit Yosemite National Park and King’s Island, go whale watching on Monterey Bay, and just enjoy different cities like Cincinnati, Fresno, and Ogden. On one memorable occasion, Susan and Harvey were on different but concurrent projects in Andover, Massachusetts and since it was in June, the whole family had three weeks together in New England.

As Susan’s health declined, she could no longer fly, so the entire family drove to project sites. They again visited Fresno, with side trips to San Francisco, Hoover Dam, and Las Vegas, but also Ogden and a new site Atlanta, where they visited the Georgia Aquarium and Coca Cola headquarters.

In March of 2020, Susan was sent home from work as part of the response to Covid. She eventually worked from home for several months but when the IRS required that she return to work in the office, her health issues forced her to retire in March, 2021.

During this time Susan indulged in her lifetime hobby of reading romance novels, but also branched out into other genres that while still heavy on romance, also included the supernatural and murder mysteries. She also enjoyed watching various videos on the internet. The last thing Susan watched together with Harvey, just hours before her passing, was the latest update on the Lake Mead water level.

Declining health eventually forced Susan into the hospital on September 7th. She had battled congestive heart failure before and had regained enough health to return home. This time however, the damage was too severe. Despite early signs that she might recover, her condition began to worsen. After a brief period under hospice, Susan passed away on October 30, 2022. She had reached the age of 66 years and 21 days.

Susan is survived by her husband, Harvey Hohmann and son Stephen Hohmann, both of Wimberley. She is also survived by her brother Mike Short of Garden City and sisters Kay Dalley of Austin, Paula Pursche of Woodway, Sandra Hicks of Elgin, and Jennifer Huff of Millington, Tennessee; one aunt, Annette Spadora of Metairie, Louisiana, numerous nieces, nephews and cousins as well as her friends and coworkers.

She was preceded in death by her parents, grandparents, and step-grandparents.

Donations in memory of Susan may be made to the American Heart Association or the American Diabetes Association in lieu of flowers.

Friends are invited to visit with the family from 4:00pm to 8:00pm on Sunday, November 6, 2022 at Weed Corley Fish Funeral Homes and Cremation Services, 2620 South Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas 78704. Funeral services for Susan will be held at 10:00am on Monday, November 7, 2022 at Weed Corley Fish Funeral Homes and Cremation Services. Graveside services will follow at 2:00pm in Witting Cemetery, Witting, Texas.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.wcfishsouth.com for the Hohmann family.