He created the kind of pub where everybody knows your name.
Gar Hoflund, owner of Stubbies & Steins Pub and retired UF chemical engineering professor, passed away Tuesday from sudden health problems. He was 65.
Hoflund retired in September. He had worked at UF since 1977 and specialized in surface science.
“Overall, he was such a caring human being, cared not only about his own students but others he ran into around Gainesville,” said his daughter Amy Bryce Hoflund.
Although he is known for his engineering contributions, he is also famous for bringing craft beer to downtown Gainesville with his other daughter, Berkeley Hoflund.
They opened Stubbie Shirt Pub, later known as Stubbies & Steins, in 2003.
The pub became the premier spot for craft beer in downtown Gainesville. Opening with a selection of 60 craft and imported beers, Stubbies & Steins grew to serve about 400 beers, which kept the regulars coming.
Berkeley Hoflund said her dad loved beer T-shirts.
“Anyone who knows my dad knew he was a T-shirt-and-shorts kind of guy,” she said.
She said she plans to continue playing classic rock and serving craft beer, the way her father did when he owned it.
As a child, she bonded with her father in his lab at UF. She remembered going with him to do science experiments and play with the beakers.
“He was always really supportive when I did my school science projects,” Berkeley Hoflund said. “That was always so much fun.”
Amy Bryce Hoflund remembers her father as a man who loved travel, food and wine, heavy metal and Corvettes. She said her father’s lifelong passion for chemical engineering came after dismantling and rebuilding his Corvette as a 16-year-old in Sioux City, Iowa.
“He had such an open mind and was so intellectually curious,” Amy Bryce Hoflund said.
Richard Dickinson, chair for the chemical engineering department, wrote in an email that everyone was fond of Hoflund.
“Gar was an extremely popular, warm, good-natured, adventurous person,” he said. “He was very passionate about his science, and several of the graduate students he trained during his 35 years in the department went on to be quite successful.”
Gar Hoflund is survived by his longtime companion Lynn Sullivan, daughters, stepdaughters Ali and Jenny Burns, and son-in-law David Bilek.
Contact Kathryn Varn at kvarn@alligator.org and Alexa Volland at avolland@alligator.org.
Gar Hoflund plays with a cobra outside of the Memorial to Gandhi in Delhi, India.
