ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, December 19, 1996            TAG: 9612190077
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-3  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: HAGERSTOWN
SOURCE: Associated Press

HOKE'S SONS DIFFER IN THEIR RESPONSES TO DAD'S EXECUTION

Michael Hoke and Ronald Hoke Jr. couldn't agree less on their father's execution in Virginia this week.

Michael Hoke, 18, still wishes he'd had the chance to say goodbye to Ronald Lee Hoke Sr., 39, before the former Hagerstown man was executed by lethal injection Monday night for a 1985 rape, robbery and murder.

``I would have liked to have been there,'' he said. ``He could have said his last words to me, and I could have said my last words to him.''

Ronald Hoke Jr., 19, had few regrets.

``I'm glad he's dead. I wish it had happened sooner,'' he said. ``He got what he deserved.''

He said he was told that when he was 3, his father threw him down a flight of stairs. He said he has knee problems dating back to that incident.

Judy Hoke, who was married to Ronald Hoke Sr. from 1977 to 1981, said her sons weren't even notified of the execution date and saw it on the news.

``The one boy was sitting in the living room, and it hit him. It really hit him,'' she said.

David Botkins, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, said notification is not the prison's responsibility.

``It's up to the inmate's lawyer to contact the inmate's family,'' he said.

Hoke was convicted of the capital murder of Virginia Stell, 56. She was stabbed in her home Oct .4, 1985. Hoke, then 28, had been discharged from a state mental hospital in Petersburg, Va. He was given a bus ticket to Hagerstown and two dozen pills to counter anxiety.

Hoke said he cashed the bus ticket and went to a bar, where he met Stell. After going to her apartment, she started cooking and set off the smoke alarm. She slapped Hoke when he smashed the alarm, and he tied her up and stabbed her to death, Hoke admitted later.

Judy Hoke said it was difficult knowing what to tell her children while they were growing up.

``It was hard even telling them that their daddy had killed somebody. You have to really sit and ponder that,'' she said. ``It has hit me today. He is my kids' father. Even though we were divorced, there is some emotion there.''

Michael Hoke, who keeps a shoebox full of letters from his father, said prison may have changed his father for the better.

``He wanted me to be a better person, do right and stuff like that, and not make the same mistakes he made,'' Michael Hoke said. ``He had a better grasp on life.''

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