Hazel Vorice McCord is the name used in genealogy and biographical databases for the woman also documented as Hazel Victoria McCord and, after marriage, Hazel Van Dyke. She was the wife of Loren Wayne Van Dyke and the mother of entertainers Dick Van Dyke and Jerry Van Dyke. Unlike her famous sons, Hazel did not build a public career in entertainment, so the surviving biographical record about her is comparatively limited.
One detail about her own working life is unusually well supported: Hazel was a stenographer. Dick Van Dyke’s official biography identifies his mother as “Hazel Victoria (née McCord), a stenographer,” and Dick himself described her as a stenographer in a 2016 interview with The Guardian. That direct evidence is important because some secondary databases instead label her a teacher.
Hazel Vorice McCord, Hazel Victoria McCord and Hazel Van Dyke
The different versions of Hazel’s name can make searches confusing.
Dick Van Dyke’s official website calls her Hazel Victoria (née McCord). MyHeritage’s Biographical Summaries of Notable People database records her as Hazel Van Dyke and lists Hazel McCord and Hazel Vorice McCord as aliases. The same record identifies Loren Van Dyke as her husband and Dick and Jerry Van Dyke as her sons. Taken together, these records make clear that searches for Hazel Vorice McCord and Hazel Victoria McCord are referring to the same Van Dyke family member.
That distinction matters because low-detail online biographies sometimes treat name variations as though they represented separate facts or identities. In Hazel’s case, “McCord” was her family name, while “Van Dyke” was the surname by which she was known after marrying Loren Wayne Van Dyke.
A working family with roots in Danville, Illinois
Hazel and Loren Van Dyke were the parents of two sons who would eventually become nationally known performers. Dick Van Dyke was born in West Plains, Missouri, on December 13, 1925, and grew up in Danville, Illinois. Jerry Van Dyke was born in Danville on July 27, 1931. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas independently identifies Jerry’s parents as Loren and Hazel Van Dyke and notes that both sons went on to successful show-business careers.
The family background was far removed from Hollywood. Hazel worked as a stenographer, while Loren became a salesman. A Television Academy profile of Dick says Loren worked for the Sunshine Biscuit Company and spent substantial time traveling during the Depression-era years when Dick and Jerry were growing up in Danville.
Hazel’s family also appears to have shaped part of Dick’s early outlook. His official biography describes his mother’s family as strongly religious and says that, as a boy, Dick briefly considered becoming a minister before drama redirected his interests toward performing.
What Dick Van Dyke remembered about his mother
The most revealing description of Hazel comes not from a genealogy database but from her son.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2016 about his family, Dick contrasted his mother’s personality with that of his more reserved father: “My mother was the opposite. She was funny like Dad, but much more talkative.” He also remembered Hazel as absent-minded and illustrated the point with a characteristically comic family anecdote about a cooked ham somehow ending up in his father’s shirt drawer.
Those recollections provide a more useful picture of Hazel than the bare names and dates repeated by many biography sites. In Dick’s account, she emerges as humorous, conversational and memorable in the everyday domestic life of the Van Dyke household.
His recollection also reinforces the occupational record. In the same interview, Dick explicitly referred to “my mother, Hazel, a stenographer” while describing his parents’ early life together. That first-person statement carries more evidentiary weight than later unsourced summaries assigning Hazel a different profession.
Mother of two very different entertainers
Hazel’s place in entertainment history is indirect but unmistakable through her sons.
Dick Van Dyke developed a career spanning stage, television and film, including The Dick Van Dyke Show and Mary Poppins. Jerry Van Dyke pursued his own career as an actor and comedian and became particularly associated with his Emmy-nominated role as Luther Van Dam on the television series Coach.
The Television Academy’s biographical account places both brothers together in Danville during their formative years, while the Encyclopedia of Arkansas confirms Hazel and Loren as Jerry’s parents. These institutional accounts are useful because they establish the family relationship without depending on celebrity-biography sites that often copy information from one another.
Hazel herself did not need a show-business career to become part of the Van Dyke story. The most substantive sources portray the family as a working Midwestern household from which two sons independently found their way into entertainment.
Why some Hazel McCord biographies conflict
Several precise claims commonly attached to Hazel should be handled more carefully than many online profiles do.
Was Hazel a stenographer or a teacher?
MyHeritage’s biographical-summary database describes Hazel as a teacher and lists teacher as her occupation. But Dick Van Dyke’s own account in The Guardian identifies his mother as a stenographer, and his official biography independently uses the same occupation. Given the direct first-person evidence and the agreement between those two sources, stenographer is the better-supported description. The available sources do not justify presenting a teaching career as established fact.
What were Hazel Vorice McCord’s birth and death dates?
Online databases are also inconsistent about her birth year. Wikidata currently lists October 6, 1896 as Hazel’s birth date and September 27, 1992 as her death date. Crucially, however, the Wikidata entries for both dates show zero references attached to those statements.
MyHeritage instead gives her birth year as 1897, while also placing her death in 1992. Because the accessible databases conflict on the birth year and the exact Wikidata dates lack supporting references, October 6, 1896 should not be presented as unquestionably settled without a primary vital record or another authoritative source. The defensible point from the accessible records is that the databases agree Hazel died in 1992, while her precise birth information remains less securely documented.
This discrepancy also explains why readers may encounter biographies giving slightly different versions of Hazel’s age, dates or occupation. Repetition across genealogy and celebrity sites does not, by itself, resolve those conflicts.
What is firmly documented about Hazel Vorice McCord
The strongest accessible record is narrower than many online biographies suggest, but it establishes the essentials clearly: Hazel McCord—documented as Hazel Victoria and indexed elsewhere as Hazel Vorice—married Loren Wayne Van Dyke, worked as a stenographer, and was the mother of Dick and Jerry Van Dyke. Her sons grew up principally in Danville, Illinois, and Dick later remembered his mother as funny, talkative and memorably absent-minded.
Those documented details tell a more reliable story than filling the gaps with unverified claims. Hazel’s public significance comes chiefly through the family environment in which two major American entertainers grew up—and through the unusually personal glimpses Dick Van Dyke later provided of the woman he knew as his mother.
Sources
- The Official Site of Dick Van Dyke — Biography. No publication or update date is shown on the page.
https://www.officialdickvandyke.com/biography/ - The Guardian — Dick Van Dyke: ‘In therapy, I realised I was repeating my father’s mistakes’. Published August 26, 2016; last modified September 20, 2016.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/26/dick-van-dyke-in-therapy-i-realised-i-was-repeating-my-fathers-mistakes - Television Academy — Dick Van Dyke: Hall of Fame Tribute. November 21, 2017.
https://www.televisionacademy.com/features/news/hall-fame/dick-van-dyke-hall-fame-tribute - Encyclopedia of Arkansas — Jerry Van Dyke (1931–2018). Last updated November 3, 2023.
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/jerry-van-dyke-4386/ - MyHeritage — Hazel van Dyke — Biographical Summaries of Notable People. No specific publication or update date is shown. Used here to document alternate-name and conflicting biographical data.
https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-10182-2063534/hazel-van-dyke-in-biographical-summaries-of-notable-people - Wikidata — Hazel Vorice McCord (Q96203236). Page last edited January 7, 2026. Used to document the exact dates commonly circulated online and the absence of references attached to those date statements.
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96203236
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