Robert Hoffman

A founder of National Lampoon magazine who went on to become a leading Dallas business owner and philanthropist and a major collector of contemporary art. As an undergraduate at Harvard in 1969, Mr. Hoffman was one of three editors at The Harvard Lampoon who helped spin a popular campus humor magazine into an irreverent national institution that skewered American culture and later spawned movies like “Animal House.” As the national magazine’s original managing editor, Mr. Hoffman recalled, he was known less for his wit than for his business acumen and editing skills. Mr. Hoffman’s active involvement in the magazine lasted only about a year, and he and the other founders sold their shares in 1975. He used the money both to make his first serious purchase of artwork — a passion since he was a teenager — and to join his father, Edmund, in the soft-drink business at a company that became the Coca-Cola Bottling Group (Southwest) Inc. Over more than two decades, the two men built the company into the nation’s fifth largest bottler of Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper before selling it, in 1998. After earning a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard, Mr. Hoffman returned to Dallas, the city where he was born, and soon became deeply involved in the city’s civic affairs. He was a longtime trustee of the St. Mark’s School of Texas, a private boys’ school from which he had graduated in 1965, and was chairman of the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society. In addition to his wife, the former Marguerite Steed, Mr. Hoffman is survived by his mother; three daughters, Augusta, Hannah and Kate; and a brother, Dr. Richard Hoffman of Denver.