In Memory of Hoa Thanh Ngo

Obituary

Hoa Thanh Ngo
06/02/1971- 07/27/2025

Hoa Thanh Ngo was born in Hué, Vietnam in 1971. With his family, he fled Vietnam and emigrated to Arkansas in 1975. He grew up in Fort Smith riding bikes and doing martial arts with his siblings, eating ramen his beloved grandmother made for them as an after-school snack, and learning how to be inventive, resilient, and determined from his parents. He made dear friends in school, and together they cobbled together early home computers to play video games, got up to hijinks in fast food parking lots, completed endless D&D campaigns, and generally made their teachers’ lives a challenge with their combination of brilliance and sly humor.

After graduating from high school, Hoa tried out CalTech but quickly realized that wasn’t the atmosphere he thrived in, despite (or perhaps because of) its proximity to beaches. He transferred to Hendrix College in Arkansas, where he pursued his deep love of literature and writing. He also learned how to brew beer in a dry county, ran an underground poker ring, and maximized his liberal arts educational experience. He continued to the University of Missouri-Columbia for his master’s and Ph.D. in creative writing. There he made a circle of friends who, like his high school friends, remained dear to him for the rest of his life. In between the happy hours, the float trips, the camping, and the pilgrimages to see Bruce Springsteen, he honed his writing and teaching skills, writing primarily short fiction and creative essays. On the side, he also always had a novel percolating, usually in his favorite genre of high fantasy.

Hoa was never happier than when he was risking life and limb in some active pursuit. He was an avid mountain and road biker and triathlete. To compete in his first triathlon, he took swimming lessons, undaunted by being the only adult in the class, surrounded by six-year-olds. His swimming skills progressed rapidly, to the point where he was teaching himself to surf within the year. Thus began a lifelong love of surfing that he shared with his son, Tycho. They took many trips together to Rhode Island and Hawaii to surf and eat lobster and shave ice. He also shared a love of snowboarding and jiu jitsu with Tycho and was always looking for new ways to defy death with him.

In grad school, he met his future wife, Tina, and they began traveling to Colorado on school breaks to backpack, camp, and hike 14ers. He was an accomplished hiker and climber, summiting multiple peaks in each trip. His side goals on those trips, as well as in all of his travels, were to search out local IPAs and hole-in-the-wall pho restaurants. Hoa and Tina (and eventually Tycho) ate many bowls of pho in unlikely places.

While still completing his doctorate, Hoa began working at The Missouri Review, where he progressed from web editor (instituting the journal’s first web presence) to managing editor, a position he held for several years. He was an incisive and intuitive editor, helping to discover and nurture many authors who went on to literary success. He gave up that job that he so enjoyed to move to New York where Tina was teaching at Hamilton College. He eventually went on to also teach literature and creative writing at Hamilton and thrived on being in the classroom, easing students’ fears about sharing their writing and speaking in workshop, and helping them grow into their talent with a rare combination of wit and empathy. In the meantime, he was composing his own short fiction and nonfiction and had several stories and essays published in national journals. His writing was spare, acerbic, and quietly philosophical. His wry humor was evident in every sentence, often tempered by a beautiful image or observation.

Even as he taught and wrote, he kept up his web design skills, creating and hosting websites for many clients as well as providing much unpaid advice and tech support to his very grateful family members. He was a wizard at all things technical, bringing to the thorniest problems a methodical patience and an unwillingness to admit defeat.

2007 was one of the happiest years of Hoa’s life because his son, Tycho, was born. Hoa adored Tycho and conveyed his passion for computers, video games, superhero comics, and all things outdoorsy to him. He also loved sharing stories of his own childhood capers and sibling antics as well as “sharing” (or perhaps stealing) Tycho’s favorite hats and sunglasses. They were inseparable from the start and made each other laugh every day. Hoa and Tina and Tycho went on to have many adventures together. They hiked and rafted the Grand Canyon, spent every summer camping in the Adirondacks, traveled cross-country with their dog, Boomer, and trekked to various oceans in search of waves. Hoa taught Tycho many life lessons, including how to worship at the altar of the pristine car, from scoping out the best car washes and free vacuums to how to enforce the commandments of what can and can’t be consumed “in vehicle.”

When he was diagnosed with T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in November 2023, Hoa was just as analytical and determined in his approach to the disease as he was to troubleshooting technical issues. During his 18-month battle with leukemia, he never faltered, was stoic through all the treatments, and agreed to extra procedures to help further leukemia research. He endured everything without complaining, including multiple clinical trials and a stem cell transplant, resolved to maximize his time with his friends and family, especially Tycho. He and Tycho continued to play video games together and watch MMA fights and superhero movies, even during Hoa’s extended inpatient hospital stints. Tycho continued to be the brightest light in Hoa’s life, bringing hope and humor to difficult times. All of Hoa’s friends and family rallied around him, and he was touched and grateful for their support, even as he bemoaned the endless ding of text notifications. He also deeply appreciated his parents and siblings’ unwavering help and their willingness to drop everything and travel long distances to bring him takeout pho and homemade stir fry as he suffered the hospital cuisine. Tina was by his side to the end and never stopped being impressed and inspired by his fortitude.

Hoa was a funny, brilliant, creative soul and an extraordinary husband, father, brother, and son. He was most comfortable in the role of observer, but when he made a friend, it was for life. He will be deeply missed by all who knew him. Hoa is survived by his wife, Tina Hall, his son, Tycho Ngo, his parents, Tinh and Khanh Ngo, his siblings, Viet Ngo, Trung Ngo, and Katherine Ngo, and his nieces and nephews, Eliot Ngo, Kiran Ngo, Lele Brill, Adalin Brill, Van Brill, Joshua Hall, and Sydney Hall. To honor Hoa’s memory, please find some questionable pho to consume or a dojo to roll at or a truly stellar IPA with which to toast him.

Arrangements are in the care of Friedel, Williams & Edmunds Funeral and Cremation Services, 13 Oxford Rd, New Hartford.

Online messages of sympathy may be left at: www.fwefh.com