101 Years Ago Today

My Grandpa George Alden Hopkins was born. Here's Grandpa Alden, about 2 years old, circa 1908 with his little sister Vera Aline Hopkins Rehbine. The photo was taken in Everett, Washington.

Unfortunately the family lost their Mother Blanch Wolcott Hopkins in 1918. We speculate this photo was taken before then because of all the detail given to their clothes. In later pictures they look a little more "ragamatag" (however that is supposed to be spelled! LOL). That is again, Aunt Vera, then my Grandpa Alden and Uncle Paul Wolcott Hopkins. Sitting beside them is the youngest, Philip Sedgewick Hopkins. From this generation, only Uncle Philip's wife Elaine is still living and she not for very long.

My Grandpa Alden graduated from the University of Washington about 1927 and served as an Elder in their church. That position included being responsible for teaching and preaching, so he was actually a pastor. He was a carpenter by trade and built homes, but he also went to Palmer Chiropractic School in the evenings during the 1940s and became a Chiropractor. Besides his love of studying God's word, he enjoyed his family which included three girls, my Mother being the youngest and Grandma Hopkins whom he called Honey Bunch! Hunting was another activity which he enjoyed and which kept the family fed. Here he is pictured with a moose he shot in Canada and a friend. He is on the left. One of the moose heads was preserved by a taxidermist and named Jasper. When I was a girl, Jasper was stored in Grandmas attic. I was always afraid that this moose head would jump out and get me! LOL

Here are the children grown up. L to R, Philip, Alden, Vera and Paul. I never had the chance to meet Grandpa because he died in 1962 when my Mom was only 16 years old. He and Grandma were high school sweethearts, meeting in 1921 and marrying in 1930 after university and Grandma Hopkins attaining her lifetime teaching credential. Even though she was only 56 when he died, she never married again. She told me the verses in Isaiah 53 that talk about how we are healed by His stripes helped carry her through her immense grief. For me it was a perfect example of leaning on Jesus no matter what, how He knows and cares about each of our pains and how He already healed them by His love on the cross 2000 years ago!

Though I never met Grandpa Hopkins, I know I will One Day! When I got married we used his Bible on the Communion table, along with a pineapple doily crocheted by my Grandpa Johnson when he was in the TB sanitarium and the Communion itself was on Iris and Herringbone depression glass pieces that belonged to my Great Grandma Tisdale (Grandma Hopkins's mother). Yes, I am sentimental...but I felt that all these people contributed to the faith that brought me to that point and though they were not there to see the young woman I had become and the young wife I was becoming, their memory was not forgotten, nor their faith in an unchanging God! Thanks for walking down memory lane with me! :o)