Hockaday Featured in Hometown Highlight

By Tammy Moore Teague
Lavaca native Shelly Hockaday has been planning and organizing the town’s Christmas parade for the past 20 years. She has spent a lifetime serving others and is fulfilling a family legacy.
Hockaday is a 1992 graduate of Lavaca High School and  has worked for the City of Lavaca for the past three years. Currently, she serves as the City Recorder and as the water department clerk. She has two daughters, Sarah Hockaday, 17, and Sydney Hockaday, 15. Her mother and step-father, Patty and Danny Dikeman, also reside in Lavaca. The couple are both retired service professionals, Patty, a retired nurse and Danny a retired firefighter for the Fort Smith Fire Department.
“I used to help my mom and aunt when they would help with the town’s Christmas parade,” recalled Hockaday. “I volunteered as a young Girl Scout. Planning and organizing the parade, it gets me in the Christmas Spirit.”
It is important to Hockaday that she continue this life of service and her family’s legacy. “It’s important to me for my children to learn to serve,” she added. In addition to her service to the city, she has been on six medical mission trips to Honoduras. “It’s so humbling,” she said. “We go on these missions, help with dental, optical and share the gospel.”
She intends to continue this pathway of service to others and “live a simpler life and be a good steward of what God’s given us.”
We are pleased to feature Hockaday in our Hometown Highlight this month! If you know of a citizen who is deserving of this spotlight, please email us! We want to feature those ordinary citizens who are doing extraordinary things!