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Today's Featured Biography
Harold Hopkins
We-l-l-l-l, I've experienced a lot since leaving ECHS. Went to school 2 1/2 years at OBU in Shawnee, joined the Air Force in 1960, went to England (was there when the Beatles began their saga), attended Univ. of Maryland (overseas) in evenings, came back to the states in 1964, and got out of the Air Force in 1967.
I got married in 1966 and my wife and I had five children in a relatively short period of time. Since we didn't have sex education at ECHS, I didn't know what was causing them until we had a full house. Our marriage lasted until 1984 when we divorced. All 5 children stayed with me. Man, what an education I've had!
In 1985, thanks to the ECHS reunion and a talk with Sharon McClure, I found out that Beverly Holmes (she and I went together my Senior year) and she moved to Woodward in 1959), was living in Oklahoma City. I was living in Carter and working as a geological tech in the Oil Patch, so I called her just to talk about the old days. We ended up getting married in 1986. I graduated from Southern Nazarene Univ. in 1988. The oilfield had gone bust by that time, so I went to work managing the Kuppenheimer Men's Store in N. Oklahoma City. After they closed the stores in OKC, I went to Richmond, VA for a short time and then into the corporate office in Atlanta, Ga. I became national training director in 1990. In 1995, after learning that Kuppenheimer was on the market, I accepted a position as Corporate Director of Organizational Development with John Wieland Homes in Atlanta (does it seem like I spent my working career jumping off sinking ships?), the leading homebuilder in Atlanta and one of the largest independent builders in the country. Built a great training department, developed a corporate university, and pioneered distance training in the homebuilding industry. The company was first selected as one of the Top 100 training organizations in the country in 2000 and has stayed on the list every year since then.
I left the company in 2002 to move back to Oklahoma. After our son, Lance's, death in late 1999, we eventually decided we wanted to be back closer to the kids and grandkids. We have seven of the BEST grandkids - Lindsay (15), Quaid (15), Weston (14), Nicole (8), Sydnie (6), Cassie (5), and Kaden (4). As things go, after we moved back to Oklahoma, one daughter has moved to San Antonio, one has moved to Woodward, and our son has moved to Georgia! We don't have any children or grandkids in the immediate area anymore. We do have a daughter in Woodward (3 kids) and a daugher in Elk City (1 child), so are still hanging around.
After seeing all the people in our class who are traveling around in RV's, we're currently contemplating the wisdom of going in that direction. We plan to rent one and see how it works (if the blasted gas prices ever return to a more normal level). We're just staying busy and taking care of our chihuahua, Cricket.
I'm enjoying semi-retirement. Bev is still working as a legal assistant and, after retirement, I have still been writing or revising training programs and advising my former company on administering, changing, or strengthening the corporate university curriculum. I also volunteer - do taxes with the AARP, take people to medical appointments thru RSVP, and do some organizational work with local police departments. UPDATE: I'm no longer working on training programs and am not doing much volunteer work since going to work at Oklahoma History Center, the new state museum across from the state capitol. Bev and I still do music - we sang with a community chorus in Georgia and with Canterbury Singers after returning to OKC. We also sing in a number of churches in OKC, Tulsa, and Norman.
Life is Good!
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