This is a Message Board Post that is forwarded to this mailing list. Author: lace L <[email protected]> Surnames: THOMPSON, BARNES, HAMMOND Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/AWB.2ACE/2196 Message Board Post: Winifred Thompson was born September 24, 1906, in Cambridge, OH, the daughter of druggist Charles Milton Thompson (1879-1964) and Jessie Winifred Barnes (1881-1909). Her mother died when she was three, and she lived with her grandparents Barnes in rural Guernsey County, Ohio until her father's remarriage to Armintha Hammond in 1911. She graduated from Cambridge High School, and received her B.A. in speech from Muskingum College in 1929. She taught school in Sebring, Ohio, prior to her marriage. Robert Hockman and Winifred Thompson were married in New Concord on June 8, 1932, shortly after his graduation from medical school. During his internship, they made their home with his parents in Wheaton, IL, and Winifred took classes at Moody Bible Institute in preparation for mission work. The Hockmans applied to and were accepted by the Foreign Mission Board of the United Presbyterian Church in the summer of 1933. At Muskingum College, Robert had become friends with fellow student Malaku Bayen, a ward of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, and through this friendship he developed an interest in Ethiopian missions. They sailed October 14, 1933 from New York on the maiden voyage of the Italian S. S. Rex, and arrived October 25 in Alexandria, Egypt. Following a two-week orientation at mission hospitals in Assuit and Tanta, Egypt, they traveled by water and train to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, arriving there November 16. Robert was assigned as a surgeon on the staff of George Memorial Hospital in Addis Ababa where Dr. A. W. Pollock was director. Pollock's retirement and sudden death in early 1935 placed Hockman in the directorship. With the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian War in mid-1935, Hockman offered his services to Haile Selassie to head up a Red Cross unit. On loan from the mission to the International Red Cross for this purpose, he set up a medical station for Ethiopian forces along the battle front in the autumn. On December 13, 1935, he was killed while attempting to defuse an Italian bomb which had been dropped near his station. Winifred Hockman was evacuated from Addis Ababa to Egypt in July, 1935, where she gave birth to a daughter, Ruth Winifred (later Mrs. Gordon Bell) on October 30. Robert never saw his only child. Winifred and Ruth left Egypt for America in March, 1936, and settled with the William Hockmans in Wheaton. She delivered her first address about her mission experiences in Moody Church, Chicago, in May of that year. She taught at Westmont College in California, 1938-39, and returned to Wheaton due to ill health. In 1940 she began working primarily as Director of Student Housing. She retired in 1971, and in 1982 resided at her home in Wheaton.