'A feminist before the term was coined'

Services will be held Saturday for Beatrice Hokanson of New Hope, whose life and career foreshadowed the feminist revolution.

Hokanson, who was Beatrice Kennedy until she married at 84, died on Jan. 4 in New Hope.

The longtime Minneapolis resident was one week shy of her 100th birthday.

Over the decades, she was an executive secretary of a modeling school, a manager of an employment agency, personnel manager at Honeywell International Inc., and a manager at the Greater Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce.

Hokanson's second cousin, Tom Connoy of St. Paul, said she took care of her mother for many years, living much of her adult life with her.

"She was a feminist before the term was coined," said Connoy, recalling her popping into his parents' home during holidays.

"She played poker, and argued politics with the best of them," he said. "She made her point, and made it strongly."

Hokanson shunned many offers of marriage because it would curb her nightlife, volunteerism and travel, he said.

Her varied community and business activities occasionally thrust her into the limelight and she made frequent appearances in the pages of Minneapolis newspapers, modeling the latest look from a Minneapolis department store in 1965, participating in a stock investor's club in 1955, as a successful booster for the old Minneapolis Symphony in 1955, and as a leader of the Minnesota Employment Agencies Association in 1971.

At Honeywell during World War II, she was responsible for hiring hundreds of employees in a booming economy. After work, she led home front activities, such as organizing dances and stumping for the war bond drive.

After the war, she organized professional entertainers to perform at Veterans Medical Center in Minneapolis.

She also was an active volunteer with the Republican Party, the Minnesota Opera and the Boys and Girls Club.

After marrying Stan Hokanson, who died in 2002, she would joke to her family and friends, "You know honey, I am glad I didn't do it any earlier, because these three meals a day are killing me," said Pam Albinson of Edina.

Hokanson and Albinson became fast friends, after Hokanson served as Albinson's chaperone, touring South America as the Aquatennial's 1962 Queen of the Lakes. "She was a very elegant, funny lady," said Albinson. "She was very proud of her career."

Hokanson grew up in Rogers, and was a 1926 graduate of Minneapolis' old Derham Hall High School. She attended the University of Minnesota and graduated from the Minneapolis Business College.

She is survived by many cousins and her stepson, Brad Hokanson of Edina.

Mass will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday in the chapel at the Church of St. Olaf, 215 S. 8th St., Minneapolis, with visitation at 9 a.m. at the church.