An Important Place

The late Fred Hock established UC Santa Barbara’s first unrestricted endowment

When Frederick Charles Hock Jr., father of three Gauchos, passed away in 2022 at age 83, he left an estate gift to the university that shaped his children’s lives. The generosity of the Hock family established the first unrestricted endowment at UC Santa Barbara.

Fred and his wife, Beverly, had three children: Kimberly ’89, a teacher; Kristi ’91, a physical therapist; and Kirby ’94, an attorney.

“He was proud of his children. We all graduated from college in four years and became people whom he liked and respected. This endowment is my father saying: thanks, UC Santa Barbara, for helping my kids,” said his son Kirby.

Fred was a fourth-generation and lifetime San Francisco Bay Area resident who only left to serve in the Army in Germany. He believed in education. In addition to UC Santa Barbara, Fred supported his alma maters, UC Berkeley and the Menlo School, throughout his life. He and his children feel connected to the Bay Area; attending college and graduate school was the only time any of them lived away.

“More than once, my dad said, ‘I should have bought a place in Santa Barbara! I would have saved money on rent,’” said Kirby.

Fred was a property manager and real estate investor at the company that his grandfather had created, F. C. Hock Properties. When Fred retired, Kirby took over the family business.

“Having been his executor, I was repeatedly impressed with his planning. He had attorneys and brokers, but he made the final decisions. It was a grand, overarching plan of his to take his IRA and give that money back to the educational institutions that affected his life. Of course, it was the smartest way — he would recognize that.”

Fred named UC Santa Barbara as a beneficiary of his retirement plan. The Hock family chose for the resulting endowment to be unrestricted, which means that it can sustain any part of the UC Santa Barbara experience at the discretion of campus leadership.

“I trust that UC Santa Barbara will put the money where it needs to go,” said Kirby. “My sisters and I pursued various majors and activities on campus. My father saw how the university helped his three different children. He wanted to empower the university to do that for other children, and in the best way it could.”

When each of his children graduated from UC Santa Barbara, Fred gave them a lifetime membership to the UC Santa Barbara Alumni Association. It was his way of showing Kimberly, Kristi and Kirby that UC Santa Barbara was an important place — for his whole family.