Axel Hoke, M.D.

M.D., M.P.H., F.A.A.D. Born 1930 into a Germany on the edge of massive upheaval, Axel fled Hitler as a boy with his family in 1938 to establish a new life in the United States. His parents began by working in their respective medical fields with the Tennessee Valley Authority, helping the coal miners of Bluefield, West Virginia and several other areas.

Axel graduated Phi Beta Kapa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He then studied medicine at Bowman Gray, Wake Forest College (now University), in Winston-Salem, NC, where Axel received his MD in 1956. He also held a Master’s of Public Health.

After his first professional stint with the Tampa Health Department, Dr. Hoke began in 1957 with the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) as a Medical Officer at the US Coast Guard Air Station in Saint Petersburg, Florida. After meeting and marrying Adrienne there, he performed his first two years of residency at the USPHS hospital in Staten Island, New York, completing his final year in Dermatology at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York. During this time, the couple had two children, Marisa and Diana.

Dr. Hoke was offered the opportunity to create a new Department of Dermatology at the USPHS Hospital in San Francisco and so moved the family West. The new position enabled him to combine teaching and clinical practice; teaching allowed him to include his love of photography in his profession through clinical macro and micro photography.

Early in his career, Axel took a ten-week postdoctoral fellowship in Central and South America, visiting hospitals and clinics with colleagues. He gave throughout his life to help alleviate the problems he saw of overpopulation, poverty, hunger, and preventable diseases, and consistently shared his experiences with fellow physicians and students.

After 25 years with the USPHS, when the hospital closed in 1981, Dr. Hoke became acting Chief of Dermatology at San Francisco General Hospital while a search for a new Chief was undertaken. As a full- and clinical-professor in the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Medicine, he ran the teaching program in dermatology at SF General for UCSF. During this time, Axel received the Best Teacher of the Year Award and the Commendation Medal for Teaching and Patient Care, and was named Best Faculty Teacher of the

Year while working with the Family Practice residency at Sutter Community Hospital in Santa Rosa. Preferring hands-on medicine to administration, Axel eventually joined Dr. William Payne’s established practice in Novato in 1985. He took over the practice in 1999.

Over the course of his career, Dr.Hoke published many articles, but was most pleased by being co-author of Diseases of the Eye and Skin: A Color Atlas (H. Bruce Ostler; Lippincott, 2004). He has served as president of the San Francisco Dermatology Society and was honored by that group as Physician of the Year for 2005.

Axel was and continues to be an inspiration to his family and to his community. One of his proudest achievements was gathering over 1,000 signatures for the establishment of Marin hilltop greenbelt. Another was helping to establish a much-needed Dermatology clinic in Fairbanks, Alaska gathering the support of a rotating, commuting group of fellow physicians and residents to support that clinic. Most of all, he was proud of and grateful for acceptance into a cooperative endeavor of practice, learning, and teaching with his highly respected and loved cadre of fellow physicians and support staff that comprised his professional and personal life. After retirement, he greatly missed his patients and colleagues.

Axel’s friends and family knew him for his generosity, sincere relationships, caring personality, dry but kind sense of humor, and his love of hiking, nature, travel, and photography. Axel enjoyed a life rich in both cultural and natural explorations. His family will always remember the marvelous adventures he created for them in his beloved California and around the world.

Dr. Hoke is survived by his wife Adrienne, daughters Marisa (Marc Fazi) and Diana (Chuck Vinci, predeceased), granddaughter Evelyn, and sister Renate (Bob), as well as several nieces, nephews, cousins, and their families.

Services were held for Dr. Hoke July 9 at Valley Memorial Park in Novato, California. He is forever loved and missed.