John Reardon Hoyne, Jr.

Date of Birth

September 24, 1962

Date of Death

March 16, 2015

John Reardon Hoyne, Jr. – brother, son, friend and uncle extraordinaire – died at age 52 just one day before St. Patrick’s Day. Hoyne was the, eldest son and third child of a smart and boisterous Irish Catholic family of eight.

Smart, funny and exceedingly easy to be around, Hoyne was an insatiable reader endowed with an eager, omnivorous curiosity and down-to-earth wit. If conversation were an Olympic sport, Hoyne – a great listener – would have won several gold medals.

Hoyne was born in New York to Eugenia, née Gladstone, and John Hoyne. The Hoynes were a loud and lively family. Dinners were defined by conversation, fast banter and quick jokes. John could discuss national and international events with depth and insight. The sheer joy of his intellectual depth and love of justice was compelling. He was also flat-out funny. He often made everyone laugh until they could not stop.

The Hoyne family moved to California in the summer of 1970, when they arrived in Santa Barbara. There, Hoyne attended Montecito Union School and Mt. Carmel where he distinguished himself as a playful troublemaker with a lively sense of mischief. As a child, Hoyne delivered newspapers, worked in the family’s small manufacturing business, which was located in the present day Funk Zone, and later as an adolescent in any one of the several Holiday Hardware and Lumber stores his father expanded and later sold. He was an avid surfer and team player at his schools and the local Montecito YMCA.

For high school, Hoyne attended Bellarmine College Prep in San Jose. He loved music, reading and conversation. He played guitar, though never in a band, and was known for his rendition of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl,” a favorite of his grandmother’s. He – along with his entire class at Montecito Union School – sang back-up with the Carpenters when they performed at the Santa Barbara County Bowl.

Hoyne attended the University of San Diego and transferred to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and later pursued graduate studies in marketing at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, earning an MBA. While at Georgetown – from which he received a degree in English – he learned the restaurant and bar business from the ground up. Upon graduation, he moved first to Connecticut, then Paris and finally to Los Angeles where he worked for several companies in the work-hard-play-harder world of marketing and advertising. In 2003, Hoyne returned to the United States from time spent traveling and working in Central America. In 2006 he was back in Santa Barbara, and could often be found making himself at home in the household of his sister Margaret and her three children.

Apart from his cooking skills, Hoyne was blessed with the domestic capacity of being an entertaining, supportive and loyal uncle to his many nieces and nephews. For them he was almost always an ebullient, joyful noise, making each one feel they were his favorite. And they were. Hoyne’s generosity of avuncular spirit extended far beyond mere blood relations. For the troubled teenage children of friends, Hoyne offered a much needed port in the storm. For the families in question, Hoyne managed to be acutely clear-eyed without passing judgement. To an unusual degree, he could connect. Because of this, he could – and did – help others who could not, often offering extremely practical advice.

During this time, Hoyne worked in the printing industry for Alternative Copy and later B2B Printing, where his sales and marketing acumen were put to use. Hoyne became well-known and admired for his jovial presence and salesmanship throughout the Santa Barbara region.

Hoyne is survived by his mother, Eugenia Hoyne, his sisters Margaret Hoyne, Moira Conlon, Ruth Dalzell Muse and Peachy Dominé; his brothers James, Matthew and Luke; his nephews and nieces John Dalzell, Meghan, Justin and Collette Brown, Claire and James Conlon and Pierre, Callahan and Remy Dominé.

In memory of John Hoyne, please make donations to the Catholic Church of the Beatitudes for their Social Justice projects: Catholic Church of the Beatitudes, 2101 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93105.

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