Author: Pat C. Hoy II

Pat C. Hoy II is a professor of English and the director of the Expository Writing Program at New York University. He is the author of Instinct for Survival: Essays by Pat C. Hoy II (1992) and Reading and Writing Essays: The Imaginative Tasks (1991), as well as numerous essays featured in books and publications such as Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Agni, Twentieth Century Literature, and South Atlantic Review. Five of Hoy’s essays have been named “Notables” in Best American Essays. In 2003, he was awarded the Cecil Woods Jr. Prize for Nonfiction by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Hoy received his B.A. from the US Military Academy and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Homage to Vietnam

Pat C. Hoy II

While not explicitly about Memorial Day, this essay (from 1999) powerfully raises crucial questions about the meaning of the holiday and the importance of remembering, for a nation fragmented by disputes over the Vietnam War. Pat C. Hoy II (b. 1938), award-winning essayist and professor of writing who has taught at Harvard, West Point, and (now) at New York University, graduated from West Point and served in Vietnam.