Guess Who’s Singing Beside You? Lois Hobart

Skydiver, Life Coach, Mover and Shaker

If the term “mover and shaker” didn’t already exist, it would have to be coined to describe Lois Hobart. To put it simply, she is a person who gets things done. She and her husband, Jim, were among the first residents to move into The Admiral at the Lake when it opened in 2012. Lois recalls: “It was a brand new building, and I said, ‘I’ll be damned if I’m gonna live somewhere where they have Bingo every day,’” she recalls. “One of the attractive things about this community is that it’s resident-driven. What that means is, ‘You want it, you do it.’ So I started the program committee and chaired it for about seven years.”

Lois with her husband, Jim.

Among the programs Lois has fostered, and often hosts or facilitates, are outside musicians, a book group, community parties such as karaoke night, Reader’s Theatre productions and, of course, a choir. But we all know it’s not just fun and games in a residence for older adults. One of the groups Lois seeded and leads is Passages, where residents come together to talk and learn about end-of-life planning. Drawing on her experience as a certified life coach with reflective beings, a practice she founded in 2006, Lois now helps fellow residents prepare for the inevitable. “No one gets out alive,” she quips, adding in a more serious tone, “I’m passionate about people having their papers in order. Often, it requires a coach as a kind of footprint in your backside to help you get things done, so that when you go, your family doesn’t have to go on a scavenger hunt.” The Passages group creates and produces an annual Remembrance Celebration to commemorate residents, staff, and pets who have died, as well as death cafes and grief support groups.

“We need a chorus!”

Shortly after Lois and Jim moved to The Admiral, a resident said, “We need a chorus.” That was all it took for Lois, whose prior experience included singing with the William Ferris Chorale, the Grant Park Chorus, and several church choirs, to recruit a director and launch an in-house choir. Last year, with the director’s retirement on the horizon, Lois supported bringing Sounds Good Choir to The Admiral. “Having Sounds Good here has opened the door to the outside community to bring in new voices, expanding our talent pool,” she says. “The neighborhood residents have been just marvelous to come in and be so committed to being here. Plus, they could find out The Admiral is a really great place and end up coming here to live.”

Lois also enjoys meeting singers from other Sounds Good choirs, especially at the all-choir concerts at Fourth Presbyterian Church. As a former professional singer, she appreciates that the Sounds Good Choir is, “more than a bunch of old folks singing. Although I’ve had to accept the fact that there are no auditions, and not everyone reads music, the results are better than I expected. We are singing challenging music. It keeps you engaged enough that you keep coming back. And it keeps my voice in shape. I can still do a wedding or a funeral here and there,” she says with a smile.

Once an organizer, always an. . .

Lois at the Szchemyi Bath & Spas in Budapest.

Lois’s volunteer service at The Admiral is a logical extension of her professional career, which besides life coaching, included organizing and managing corporate events and entertainment. Her first entrepreneurial venture was Corporate Comedy, which she founded to produce communications and humor for sales, marketing, and management conferences. She shut the business down after 12 years. “The money was good, but I’d had my fill of the clients.”

She then spent a year as the Chicago producer for “Unique Lives and Experiences,” a Toronto-based, woman-focused lecture series. Lois handled all aspects of producing five events featuring celebrity speakers at the Rosemont Theater. “I got to work very closely with these five women: Lauren Bacall, Mary Tyler Moore, Linda Ellerby, Sarah Ferguson and Maya Angelou. Wow!” When the company announced plans to move the Chicago series to Symphony Center for its second season, Lois opted out, yet with a warning that it was a bad idea to compete with dozens of downtown events. Her advice fell on deaf ears, but her prediction proved to be correct. The series no longer has a Chicago presence.

Lois’s next venture was a year as house manager for Blue Man Group Chicago. “I was the oldest person working there, but I had a blast.”

In 2006 Lois earned certification as a life coach, with a specialty in dream coaching which she explains is “a sub-specialty of life coaching to help people identify their dream life and then find the path to achieve it.” Although no longer actively practicing, Lois is sharing her expertise with fellow Admiral residents via the Passages group.

Still spreading her wings

Lois taking to the skies for her first dive.

Lest you think Lois spends all her time creating happiness and fulfillment for other folks, take a look at this photo of her first sky-diving adventure at the Chicago Skydive Center in Rochelle. She did another dive last month and hopes to do it again in 2025. Travel is another favorite pastime, especially river cruises. A recent cruise took her from Amsterdam to Budapest.

There are some indications that the life coach occasionally takes her own advice. Explaining why she chose not to sing in the Sounds Good Summer Rocks choir, Lois says, “I don’t need another thing to add. I swim here almost every day with our water aerobics classes. I’m having to really create some boundaries so that I have an hour for reading every day. That’s usually right before dinner, and there might be a cocktail involved.”

by Helen Gagel

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1 Comment

Caroline P Cracraft on November 19, 2024 at 11:02 pm

Great account of a Great Woman.
I’m So Very Glad to be a fellow resident with Lois and Jim
at The Admiral at the Lake.