Citizen Staff/Dena Harris
Dottie and Geoffrey Hoy are retiring to Salisbury, N.C., after spending 13 years in Mayville. The couple will move at the
MAYVILLE — After 13 years in Mayville, Dottie and Geoffrey Hoy are pulling up their roots and moving to a warmer climate to start their retirement.
As an ordained minister for 39 years, Geoffrey Hoy decided it was time to retire, an option he could have chosen sooner, but decided against.
“I completed what I was supposed to do here,” Geoffrey Hoy said. “I’m 67 years old. The time is right for the congregation and for us personally.”
Geoffrey Hoy said he will miss St. Paul Lutheran Church where he baptized 194, buried 230, wed 100 and confirmed 150.
Dottie Hoy was active in the Mayville community serving as Main Street manager for six years and joining several local organizations including the Mayville Historical Society, South Beach Diet concern, Horicon Marsh International Education Center, Red Hat group and Women’s Service League. She sold her photography at Carriage Haus Shops on Main Street and spent the last two years as alderperson on the Mayville City Council.
“It’s a much harder job than what I realized and what I think other people realize,” Dottie Hoy said. “There were lots of details. Every time there’s a committee report you have to learn a whole new thing.”
Mayville was the fourth move for Geoffrey Hoy’s career. Now the couple is retiring to Salisbury, N.C.
“We bought a house there. It’s warm,” Dottie Hoy said. “I wanted to go south and a lot of people retire to North Carolina. I like the new house a lot and I’m ready to be there. It is not drizzly raining and 34 degrees.”
Dottie Hoy believes she and her husband will have a lot of visitors in Salisbury. Her family is from Ohio and has only visited Mayville a couple of times.
“Certainly the thing that I’ll miss is going into any business and knowing people by name,” Dottie Hoy said. “They are not going to know who I am in Salisbury, at least for a while. Salisbury, even though it has about 28,000 people, has a small town feeling. The landscape there is similar to Wisconsin. The hills are a little bit steeper and when I look at those hills I won’t have to think about snow on them.”
“I will miss the mixture of community friendliness and historical tradition that is mixed with an openness to creativity and trying new things,” Geoffrey Hoy said. “I hope people will remember the experiences we shared, the joys, sorrows, successes and challenges that never go away.”
Dottie Hoy said one of the reasons she and her husband chose Salisbury was because it is a main street community — meaning that people there like similar things, such as the historical preservation and downtown activities.
“The 13 years in Mayville isn’t the longest we’ve stayed in one place, but it’s kind of close. We were in Rock Island, Ill., for 15 years before we came here. And it’s time to retire,” Dottie Hoy said.
“Every time we move, I have to reinvent myself,” she said. “That is what I undoubtedly will do again.”
dharris@capitalnewspapers.com