Amsterdam’s Bill Hojohn was very smart, according to his longtime friends.
Local history fan Emil Suda said William Walter Hojohn was born in Amsterdam in 1906 and died at age 80 in 1987. He was survived by two sons, William, Jr. and Richard.
Suda said, “A tall thin lanky man with glasses, Bill had a fantastic career in electronics as he was a genius in the field — working for the General Electric in Schenectady, then the federal government at White Sands Proving Grounds [in New Mexico].
“He then came closer to home at the Rome Air Force Base [now Griffiss] doing radar work. He ended his career working in Amsterdam at Electro Metrics Corporation.
“All these places of employment were ongoing while maintaining a radio repair shop here in Amsterdam on weekends. First out of his home, followed by opening an actual shop at 222 East Main St. in 1941.
“By the 1950s, television was coming into demand and Bill expanded into the market, not just repairing sets, but even installing antennas on roofs!”
Hojohn also had a passion for model trains. Suda continued, “The electric train hobby was very popular and this is where Bill’s passion went, not with the tinplate models of Lionel or Gilbert American Flyer but with the scale HO lines.
“This is where Bill reached out to service the needs of those who purchased [model] trains. He aligned himself as an authorized repair center for the Lionel and American Flyer brands.
“In Amsterdam, a few stores sold electric trains at the Christmastime but none compared to what the John E. Larrabee Hardware Store could offer and those repairs kept Bill busy.”
There was a special shop that Bill Hojohn maintained, according to Suda, “Bill’s most remembered and iconic location was his move to 9 Grove St. in 1955 directly behind the Niagara Mohawk building on Market Street.
“Over the wooden door, with a glass window, hung a painted yellow metal sign reading 'The Radio Workshop' dressed off with two lightning bolts. Up on the second floor, one was greeted by a fairly large L-shaped model train empire about 20 feet in length, in scale HO that sadly never got completed.
“Urban renewal in Amsterdam in the early 70s forced [Bill Hojohn] to move and retire.”
Suda thanks Jerry Snyder of Historic Amsterdam League for providing information for this article from microfilm copies of the Amsterdam Recorder.
EMAIL MAN
When computer programmer Raymond Samuel Tomlinson, 74, died in 2016 in Lincoln, Massachusetts, news stories around the world noted his roots in Amsterdam, Vail Mills and Broadalbin.
At his death from a suspected heart attack, Tomlinson was a principal engineer for Raytheon. He is credited with sending the first email messages between separate computers in 1971 and making the decision to use the "@" sign to separate the sender’s name from the sender’s internet address.
Born in Amsterdam in 1941, Ray was the son of Raymond and Dorothy Tomlinson who lived near the village of Broadalbin in Vail Mills, a hamlet in the town of Mayfield.
“We knew he was smart but had no idea how smart,” said Samuel “Tom” Tomlinson, one of Ray’s cousins. Tom said that, for Ray, “School was a breeze.”
Ray was valedictorian of the class of 1959 at Broadalbin. The class had 45 students.
Ray’s girlfriend in high school was Barbara Andersen. Andersen told the Daily Gazette the young man came up with a “concoction of wires and things” that enabled her to talk with him while not interfering with her family’s business phone at the White Holland House restaurant on Route 29.
