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7th Hopson generation: children of Thomas J. Hopson, Sr. (1915-1983) Beulah Frances Ransdell (1916-1996) Family Photos:
See Hopson Family Albums for more photos. Thomas Jefferson Hopson, Jr., was born March 23, 1915, in Rupert, Greenbrier County, West Virginia, the fifth of seven children of Thomas Jefferson Hopson, Sr., and Sarah Margaret Walter Hopson.[1] Thomas married Beulah Frances Ransdell (1916-1996), the daughter of Gilbert Sterling Ransdell and Agatha Frances Mattingly Ransdell, on February 21, 1940, in Erlanger, Kentucky. They had six children, five girls and a boy, of whom I am the oldest. (In respect for their privacy, I am not including the names of my living sisters and brother on this website.) When Tom was born, his parents had already had four daughters -- Edith, Olive, Ruth, and Mabel -- the last of whom had lived only six months. So the first son, named after his father, must have been very welcome in the family. As the child of a Methodist minister, he lived in many places as he was growing up. Every few years, his father transferred to another church. The following are the places where the family lived and the age he was at the time:[2] 1915 Rupert, WV (born here) 1915-16 Ripley, WV (age 1) 1916-18 Parkersburg, WV (age 2-3; brother Carl born) 1918-19 Pikeville, KY (age 4) 1919-20 Webster Springs, WV (age 5) 1920-22 Monogah, WV (age 6-7 - started school) 1922-25 Elkins, WV (age 8-10; sister Gail born) 1925-29 Fayetteville, WV (age 11-14 - junior high school) 1929-33 Mt. Hope, WV (age 15-18 - high school) 1933-37 Parkersburg, WV (age 19-22 - Morris Harvey College) 1937-39 Guyandotte, WV (age 23-24 - Southern Methodist U.) 1939-40 Erlanger, KY (age 25 - married) Even though the family moved frequently, it appears that at least he was able to spend several years in the same grade school, another few years in the same junior high, and still another few years at the same high school. His childhood memories are mostly of the usual boyhood activities of himself and his younger brother Carl. They swam in creeks and rivers, built treehouses, hunted, fished, hiked and camped out, and had what must have been a very normal boyhood. The two brothers remained very close all their lives, although they saw each other only about once a year as adults. The lifelong dream of their father, the Reverend Thomas J. Hopson, Sr., was to found a long line of Methodist ministers, and his two sons were told very early that they would study for the ministry. Tom didn’t feel that he was “called” to preach and didn’t feel that he would be happy or successful in the ministry. But his father’s own struggle to rise from poverty to a respected profession made him all the more determined to send his sons into the same life work. Tom did well at Morris Harvey College, enjoyed college work, and excelled on the debating team, taking second and third places in state debating tournaments.[3] In his senior year he served as assistant pastor at Humphreys Memorial Church, in charge of youth work. After graduating with a B.A. degree in 1936,[4] he again discussed with his father his reluctance to enter the ministry, but his father was more insistent than ever that Tom go ahead with graduate study and pave his way for an outstanding career. So Tom hitchhiked all the way from West Virginia to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, to earn a Bachelor of Divinity degree (the equivalent of a doctoral degree)[5]. While at SMU, he taught a young people’s class at Dallas First Methodist Church, was President of the Young People’s Union, and a member of the Student Council of Religious Activities. He finished at SMU at Christmas 1938, and returned to his parents’ home in Guyandotte to complete two correspondence courses to graduate in absentia in June 1939. During this time he was also preaching on the Mommoth Circuit near Cedar Grove. His first appointment was to a country circuit in Levisay, West Virginia, a great disappointment to him, because with a B.D. degree he had expected an associate pastorate in a large church. In October 1939 he visited his family in Erlanger, Kentucky. There he was introduced to a member of the Erlanger Methodist Church, Beulah Frances Ransdell. After he returned to Levisay, they corresponded for a few months. When he was able to get an appointment to the Moundsville, West Virginia, Circuit, a far more prestigious location, he left for Moundsville with high hopes and a promised bride. Tom and Beulah were married on February 21, 1940, at the Erlanger Methodist Church, Erlanger, Kentucky. About 40 guests attended the afternoon wedding. Tom's father officiated at the ceremony. But his apprehensions about his fitness for the ministry proved to be well founded. He was a fine speaker, but he found the personal dealings with people rather difficult. His own religious convictions were undergoing inward analysis and questioning, as they would continue to do all his life. He was, after all, a very intelligent man, well educated and well read. But modern thinking wasn’t expected of a young preacher in the small West Virginia parishes. In September 1940 he and Beulah moved to a church in Richwood, West Virginia, where their first child, Jane Marie, was born on September 12, 1941. Then in November 1941, he was appointed to the Wesley Foundation at the University of West Virginia in Morgantown. Their second daughter was born on January 27, 1943. His next pastorate was at Fairmont, West Virginia, and it was a difficult one because of the church’s internal problems. He discussed this with his father, then serving a church in Cold Springs, Kentucky, and the two of them worked out a trade. Thomas, Senior, wanted to return to West Virginia, and Thomas, Junior, wanted to be in Kentucky mostly for Beulah’s sake. Thus, in September 1943, Thomas J. Hopson Senior went to Fairmont, West Virginia, and his son went to Cold Springs, Kentucky. By this time Tom had made the decision to leave the ministry. It was not an easy decision to make, nor would it be an easy one to carry out, for many reasons. But he felt that he would be dissatisfied and frustrated the rest of his life by staying with a career to which he strongly felt he was not suited. He saved money carefully until he had enough put aside so that he felt able to embark upon a new life with the uncertainties that would bring. In September 1944, he went to his last church, at Wheelwright, Kentucky, where their third daughter, Constance Louise, was born on November 9, 1945. In May 1946, he resigned from the Methodist Conference and moved to 12 Main Street, Erlanger, Kentucky. The following year, 1947, he bought a two-family house at 717 Dixie Highway in Erlanger, the beginning of many years of real estate investments. While living there, Tom and Beulah’s only son was born. In October 1948, the family moved to a multi-family house at 17 Martin Street, Covington, Kentucky, where two more daughters were added to complete the family. The youngest, Beverly Sue, was born December 23, 1950. Tom also purchased multi-family houses on Madison Avenue, Ninth Street, and Russell Street in Covington for rental income. In April 1952 the family moved to 3004 Charter Oak Road, South Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, a large seven-room house surrounded at that time and for many years thereafter by unused farm land. They lived in that house for over twenty-five years, until well after all the children had grown up and left home. Tom worked for a number of years in the downstairs shoe department of Pogue’s department store in Cincinnati, eventually becoming assistant buyer. Later, he went to the better shoe department of Shillito’s. For several years he owned a large newspaper route in Covington. In 1966 he was hired by the Cincinnati Post Office as a letter carrier. He was always blessed with good health, for himself and for his family. He managed to use his education and his trained mind for his own personal satisfaction, pursuing a variety of interests. He developed an interest in astronomy and built a telescope from a kit. Another time, he took a correspondence course in TV repair and built a tube tester. Geology fascinated him, and he collected the rocks and fossils that gave evidence of the inland sea that covered the Ohio Valley millions of years ago. He gardened because it was a low cost way of putting food on the table and also because he loved doing it. His interest in philosophy and theology and history never lessened over the years. (His oldest granddaughter told of the time she needed information to write a last-minute paper on Ethan Allen and the library was closed. She asked Granddad if he happened to know anything about Ethan Allen, and right off the top of his head he gave her enough material to write her paper!) Ultimately, when for the first time in his life he had a little extra money, he began investing in the stock market. During his last years that was one of his favorite pastimes, evaluating his investments, adding up his gains and losses on scraps of paper. His other favorite thing was traveling. After the three oldest girls married and left home, the car wasn’t so crowded, so he started going on family trips. He took them to Mammoth Cave so many times the family joked he should get a job as a guide there. After he had seen all of Kentucky, he headed out to other states. After his retirement from the Post Office, he and Beulah traveled over most of the country. My personal remembrances ... He left the ministry but certainly not the church. When we lived in Covington, he always took us older kids to Sunday School at Shinkle Methodist church. He served on the Official Board there and taught a junior boys Sunday School class. One of the rowdiest little troublemakers in the class turned up years later as a very brief summer “romance” of mine -- but Daddy never saw him as anything but the kid who crawled under the seats in class. Later, at Erlanger Methodist, he served as Sunday School superintendent and taught the adult class for quite some time. He loved to get into controversial discussions -- during the fifties when civil rights and integration were becoming important issues, there were some lively arguments going on in that class. One Father’s Day, they were giving the inevitable awards -- oldest father, youngest father, etc. Of course, Daddy was called up to receive the award for father with the most children present. He embarrassed us to death by asking us to stand up -- we filled an entire pew -- and he told the congregation he was prouder of his family than anything else. He always had a very strong faith in God. He often referred to his nightly prayers, and he loved to talk about his religious philosophy. During his retirement years, he became increasingly active in the work of the Erlanger Methodist Church and the Methodist Men. Daddy took a strictly hands-off attitude toward our life choices, I’m sure because of all the pressure he had received from his father. Daddy was willing to help his only son get his training when he decided on a career in aviation, mainly I think because he was more in favor of vocational training than college education. Daddy was usually easy-going, though he had a temper which we didn’t want to get aroused. He developed the protective shell of apparent deafness common to many fathers and would sit reading his paper oblivious to all the commotion caused by six kids running and yelling through the house. During his last year or two at the Post Office he had trouble with his knees, and he eventually took disability retirement in 1977. By then he had the house on Loving Lane with room for a garden again, and access to the fields and woods he loved to walk in. Retirement certainly didn’t put him in a rocking chair, though he pretty well wore out the springs on the couch where he napped, read, and watched TV. But he spent most of his time in good weather working in the garden and around the yard and house. He took a part-time job as a crossing guard for two of the Edgewood area schools. He loved to travel and was delighted to have the opportunity to visit my brother in Houston, Bev in Los Angeles, and us all over the country. Whenever I told him we were going to move, he pulled out his road maps and started planning his next trip. When we were living in Virginia in about 1978, Mom and Dad came to visit us and we had his sister Ruth and her family come to our house for dinner. They really enjoyed that little reunion. In November 1980 he and Mom took their first airline flight to have Thanksgiving with us in Los Angeles. In 1982 his brother Carl had surgery for an aneurysm in the aorta near his kidneys. It was very serious, but they found it before it ruptured, and when Dad and Mom visited him in June of that year, he was recovering well. They had a wonderful visit, and Mom took a picture of the two of them. It would be the last time they would see each other. The morning of March 15, 1983, he went to work as usual, helping children cross the busy Dudley Road, first at St. Pius Elementary School and then at Hinsdale. Between schools, as was his custom, he stopped at Connie’s house to see his “babies” – her two youngest daughters. He mentioned then for the first time a pain in his back. Later, at home, he told Beulah about it, and when it got worse, she drove him to the emergency room at St. Elizabeth South. Hours later he was operated on for an aneurysm in the aorta in the area of his kidneys. The surgery lasted eight hours and he was given twenty pints of blood. Miraculously, he survived the surgery, but his kidneys failed and on March 18 he was transferred to Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati for dialysis treatments. During the first few days after surgery he was awake and aware, and knew that Bev and I had come from Los Angeles and our brother from Houston to see him, and of course that Beulah, his other daughters, and the older grandchildren were constantly at his side. But he was very ill due to the kidney failure and was soon unresponsive. His strong heart kept going, but the many complications that set in were impossible to overcome. After seven weeks of a valiant fight for life, he died on May 2, 1983. On the day of his funeral, the Edgewood Police Department flew their flag at half mast in his honor. His youngest sister Gail was the only one of his siblings to attend his funeral, and we were all so touched as she walked in. His older sisters Edith and Ruth had died before him, and Olive lived in Florida and wasn't able to travel. But we were all very surprised and disappointed that his brother Carl didn't come. I called him a few days later, and talked to his wife Jean, who told me he was just too upset to come. When she finally, reluctantly, let me talk to him, I realized there was something very wrong with Carl. He simply wasn't himself, and he didn't respond to me as he would have in the past. A few months later, in her Christmas card, Jean finally admitted that Carl had Alzheimer's disease and wasn't able to understand or remember what had happened. Carl died five years later in the Veterans Hospital in Lexington. His family put together a book of their memories about Tom, and in it will be found many other stories about him, as told by his sisters, wife, children, and grandchildren. He was very much loved, and greatly missed by all of them. He is buried in the Forest Lawn Cemetery, Erlanger, Kentucky. Eulogy … Tom
Hopson was a man of simple pleasures – His
greatest joy was in his grandchildren – his only titles were Dad and He liked
reading the newspaper, traveling, going to church, working around Most of all, he loved to walk and talk. He
walked in the woods and fields, He talked with Beulah,
with his kids and grandkids, About the weather, politics, his garden, the Bible, the stock market, his plans … And every day he walked and talked with his God. He believed with all his heart in the life hereafter—in Heaven. Each of
us must imagine for ourselves what Heaven is … Had he been a poet, he might have written these lines:
I love thy rocks and rills, It’s not
hard to imagine what his Heaven is like, (1916-1996) Family Photos
Beulah Frances Ransdell was born on January 19, 1916, in Ludlow, Kenton County, Kentucky, the fifth of seven children of Gilbert Sterling Ransdell and Agatha Frances Mattingly Ransdell. (see RANSDELL and MATTINGLY) Beulah’s father worked as a conductor on the Southern Railroad, and the family moved to Somerset, Kentucky, one of the railroad terminals, after Beulah’s birth. When she was two and a half years old, in July 1918, her brother James Orville (called Jim) was born; and in March 1921, her youngest brother was born. That same year the family moved to Erlanger, Kentucky, where they remained. Beulah had two sisters, Sarah and Annabelle, who were eight and six years older, and two older brothers, Arthur and John Gilbert (called J.G.). It was J.G. to whom she was always closest. She recalls he would even play paper dolls with her. Each summer during her childhood, Beulah and her sisters and brothers, three at a time, got to travel by train (using their father’s pass) from Erlanger to the railroad station at Burgin, Kentucky. There they would be met by relatives, driving a horse and buggy for many years, and taken to spend a week or two with all the uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents in Harrodsburg. Beulah went to Elsmere School, then entered Erlanger Lloyd High School the first year it was open. She completed the tenth grade, but because she was too shy to give an oral book report, she couldn’t pass English so she quit school. Her mother’s health was poor. She had extremely high blood pressure and had had one stroke. In those days they didn’t know much about preventive medicine. She simply became a bedridden invalid. Sarah was married and had one child by then; Anna Belle had been working for quite a few years, so on Beulah fell most of the responsibility for keeping house for her father and brothers. When Beulah was twenty, in September 1936, her mother died of a stroke. Photographs of Beulah in her early twenties show a remarkably pretty young woman. Just barely over five feet tall, she weighed less than one hundred pounds and looked like a model in the long, draped fashions of the 1930s. Her hair, light blond as a girl, had turned a soft brown by the time she was twenty; her eyes were blue, her complexion clear, and her teeth white and straight. She had a beautiful smile and a deep dimple in her left cheek (only one of her daughters inherited her dimple). As the years went by, people were always remarking that she looked much younger than her true age. Beulah and her family were members of the Erlanger Methodist Church. In September 1939, the Reverend Thomas J. Hopson, Sr., who had served churches in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky for many years, was sent to Erlanger. The next month, his son, Thomas J. Hopson, Jr., also a Methodist minister just out of seminary, came to stay with his parents in Erlanger for a few weeks. When he returned to West Virginia, he and Beulah continued their courtship by mail, and before long they were planning to be married. On February 21, 1940, they were married by Tom's father in a simple afternoon ceremony at the church. Beulah’s maid of honor was her best friend, Alene Ishmael (later Poe). The couple remained in Moundsville until September 1940 when they moved to Richwood, West Virginia. There, on September 12, 1941, their first child, Jane Marie, was born. Two months later, they moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, where on January 27, 1943, another daughter was born. In May 1943, they moved to Fairmont, West Virginia. Other events were taking place during these years, back in Kentucky and all over the world. In September 1940 Bill Warnke died, leaving Beulah’s oldest sister Sarah a widow with three children and pregnant with a fourth. Then in December 1941, the United States entered World War II. Three of Beulah’s brothers were called into service: J.G. went to India, her youngest brother to Italy (right after the birth of his first child), and Jim went to Texas. Always very close to her family, Beulah felt especially lonely for them during these difficult times. A letter Beulah wrote from her home in Morgantown, West Virginia, to her sister Sarah in Kentucky, dated February 7, 1943, just after the birth of her second child, tells a little about Jane, a little about the new baby, a little about the war, and more than a little about Beulah. Here are some excerpts: I’m happy to write that we are home and getting along fine. ... The doctor told me I had been such a good patient he would let me go home on the 9th day - if I promised not to do anything for 10 more days. He let me come because I was so homesick to see Jane, and honestly I never realized she would ever look so sweet and pretty as she did to me. When she first grabbed me around the neck and said “Mommy” -- talk about laughing and crying at the same time -- well, I did and I couldn’t help it to save my life. Tom had to be away from her some and I guess she cried every minute he was gone. She never did let the woman here do a single thing for her until I came home. The first few days I was gone, she let the boys (students at UVA) here entertain her, but toward the last she cried with them. The poor little thing couldn’t understand why I left so suddenly and I guess was afraid every time Tom left that he wouldn’t return either. He said she wouldn’t eat or sleep much all the time I was gone.... Jane certainly does love the baby but we are so afraid she will hurt her since she doesn’t know not to. I think after a week or so though, she will get used to her being around and not want to see her so much. Right now she always wants to be pointing to her eyes, ears, etc., so we have to watch her so closely. Believe me, [the baby] is the best baby I ever saw. She hasn’t cried more than 20 minutes since she came in the house Friday P.M. and I’m not sorry. I don’t think Jane ever slept one whole night without crying since she’s been here -- and still does. [The baby] weighed 2 lbs. less than Jane did and is 2 inches shorter. She is 18 inches long. She seems so tiny to me. I think she will look more like Tom -- although her hair is very light and she has one dimple. Her nose and chin are more like the Hopsons. She is certainly a sweet little thing and we all love her so much. The doctor told me to stay off the steps from four to six weeks. But I don’t see how I can do that since my kitchen is downstairs. Tom has carried me up and down to eat and you should see Jane stand back and laugh -- she thinks that’s the funniest sight she ever saw, for her daddy to be carrying me. We are well pleased with the woman we have and she will continue to come four days a week for some time yet. The days she isn’t here I’m not going to do anything and Tom can be here most of the time to help with Jane, or else he’ll take her with him. She would rather go with him anytime than to stay with me. I wish you all could hear her say “Rock-a-bye, baby.” It’s just too sweet and she says it so plainly. Believe me, [the baby]’s coming was certainly different than Jane’s as far as my visitors and gifts were concerned. There were only five people from this city that came to the hospital to see me. The church secretary brought me a pretty white buggy robe and that was the only gift [the baby] received from the 1500 Methodists here. Tom and I dislike this place more every day and would leave tomorrow if we had something else to do. Of course, we will stay until the conference year ends in September unless a better offer comes our way .... Don’t you think this very rich church could have sent me at least a card -- after all, I am the University pastor’s wife, but because I have always had to stay home with Jane, they don’t think I’m anybody. I guess when we were in Moundsville and Richwood, we were respected so highly that I got spoiled and just can’t take it here. Now I’ll change the subject. How do you like slicing your own bread? Not much fun, is it? I wouldn’t mind it at all if I thought it would end the war one minute sooner, but just how it can, I don’t know. Also in that letter Beulah hinted of something “too indefinite to talk about yet and I guess almost too good to be true.” I believe it had to do with their return to Kentucky. Beulah was very pleased when Tom and his father arranged to exchange churches so that Tom could go to the Kentucky conference and his father could return to West Virginia. In September 1943, Tom, Beulah, and their two little girls moved to Cold Springs, Kentucky, for a year. Then in September 1944, they were sent to Wheelwright, a bleak little coal mining town in eastern Kentucky. There on November 9, 1945, their third daughter, Constance Louise (called Connie) was born at home. Tom was at least thirty years ahead of his time, being right there at Beulah’s side during labor and childbirth, holding the chloroformed cloth over her nose at the doctor’s direction. Tom left the ministry in the spring of 1946, and by the time Beulah’s brothers had returned from overseas, she and her family were back in Erlanger. On October 3, 1947, she gave birth to her fourth child and only son at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Covington. A year later, the family moved to 17 Martin Street in Covington, where the fifth and sixth children, two more daughters, were born. So, Beulah had six children under ten. She didn’t drive a car, so it was very seldom that she ever had a minute away from them. She made most of the girls’ clothes in addition to doing the enormous amount of cooking, washing, ironing, and cleaning for a family of that size. In April 1952, the family moved to the house on Charter Oak Road in South Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, and it was there Beulah finally learned to drive and got her driver’s license. For years she drove to Covington every Saturday morning to collect rents from the apartment houses they owned. And, of course, as the children grew older, she was on the road quite frequently, chauffeuring them to and from their various activities. In 1977 Tom and Beulah sold the house on Charter Oak Road to Connie and her husband, and bought a house on Loving Lane at the bottom of Dudley. Tom retired from the Post Office shortly afterwards and they spent their retirement years doing lots of traveling around the country. Beulah wasn’t crazy about travel, but she always went along whenever Tom suggested it. She was an old-fashioned wife who never gave a thought to herself and her own needs -- she lived for her husband and especially her children, even after they were grown. Tom died in 1983, and Beulah continued living in the house on Loving Lane for a few years, until the upkeep became a burden to her. She then moved to a duplex in Erlanger, and in 1993 to another duplex right next door to the Charter Oak Road house where Connie and her family were living. Beulah was in excellent physical health, but she was experiencing severe memory loss. She was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and she would not be able to live alone much longer. Her daughters, especially Connie, had looked after her since Tom’s death, taking on more and more responsibilities as she was unable to handle them. They moved her next door to Connie to make it more convenient, and then in a tragic irony of fate, Connie died of cancer in August 1994. Beulah’s memory was so poor she could not remember that Connie was gone, and continued talking about her as if she were still living next door. My other sister then willingly assumed the responsibility of looking out for her mother, making it possible for Beulah to remain in her own apartment as long as she possibly could. Finally, in December 1995, Beulah’s physical health began to fail, and there was no choice but for her to go to a nursing home. On September 17, 1996, at the age of 80, she passed away, and is buried beside Tom in Forest Lawn Cemetery. Personal Recollections: It’s a good thing Mom had a large family, because she has always been a firm believer in the adage, “A woman’s place is in the home.” And except for brief stays in the hospital to deliver her children, home is exactly where she has always been. She never left us to baby sitters, except that the older kids cared for the younger ones when she went shopping. She was always there when we got home from school and always awake when we got home from an evening out (always). Her home and family were her entire life, and her only outside interest was the church. Mom married in 1940 and by the end of 1950 she had six children. So for the three decades of the forties, fifties, and sixties, her profession was the one with the hardest work, the longest hours, no vacations, no holidays, and not much appreciation: housewife-and-mother. But it was all she wanted to do. She began the job in the days of wringer washers, clothes drying on the line winter and summer, no prepared or instant foods, no frostfree refrigerator, no self-cleaning oven, no permanent press, no drip-dry, no Teflon. She did have her mother’s old Kenmore sewing machine (which still works today) and on that she made most of our clothes. Little girls wore dresses all the time then, and she sewed them for us, then washed, starched, and ironed them. She collected all the scraps after cutting out the patterns and made them into patchwork quilts. She baked cakes, pie crusts, cookies, biscuits and rolls -- from scratch, of course, there was no other way -- and her homemade cloverleaf rolls were the most delicious you ever put in your mouth. My personal favorite was always her delectable butterscotch pie. I can remember her doing the wash with a wringer washer, in the basement when we lived in Erlanger and in the kitchen at Martin Street. While the washer chugged away with its load, the piles of clothes would be waiting on the floor. Mom would reach into the hot soapy water with a stick to lift out each piece of clothing and run it through the wringer. Then she would drain the soapy rinse water into a tub to be used to wash the second load of clothes. That’s why she always started with white clothes, then colors, then darks. (I also seem to recall that stick she used to lift the wet clothes had more than one purpose -- she used it on us a few times.) There was no spray starch then. Starch had to be cooked, and each shirt collar and cuff and each little dress dipped into the mixture, then run through the wringer again. Then, out to the clothesline in the back yard, except during rainy weather when the laundry had to be dried in the basement. Once off the line, there was that huge basket of ironing which had to be sprinkled, rolled up and ironed. It took hours. She let me iron handkerchiefs and pillowcases once in a while, and that seemed to be kind of fun. But how glad I am that ironing is virtually a thing of the past! When my next sister and I were small, our hair was long and worn in pigtails. A few of Connie’s pictures at age two or three show her hair braided too. But that had to be a chore. And, of course, we weren’t too cooperative. I remember all of us yelling our heads off when she brushed and combed out the tangles and plaited our hair. By the time I was in the second grade, we all had haircuts. Mom was very particular how we looked, taking pride in sending us off to Sunday School or to school neat and clean and combed. We didn’t usually come home that way, but at least she had the satisfaction of seeing that we started out that way. Mom tried giving us home permanents quite a few times too. They used to smell so bad and take half a day. There were no blow dryers then, except in beauty shops. When we wanted curls, we had to have our wet hair set in pincurls or rollers and then wait for it to dry, usually overnight. Mom always said if she had known she was going to have five girls, she would have gone to beauty school. She had to wait for a granddaughter (Connie’s oldest daughter) before she finally got a beautician in the family. When we moved out to the house on Charter Oak Road, we raised chickens, and even though I liked fried chicken as well as anybody, I surely hated to see how it came about. Daddy would catch a chicken and chop its head off; then after it had finished flopping headlessly all over the yard, Mom would come out with a bucket of boiling water, plunge the chicken into it, and pull off all the feathers. Then she’d take it into the kitchen to “dress” it. As far as I know, she did it without thinking much about it, but I think I’d have to be starving before I could do it. Thank goodness for the nice packages of chicken all cut up in the meat counters! Mom’s meals were plain, simple, and well balanced. We didn’t have lots of snack foods or soft drinks, and desserts meant one serving each. She always kept apples, oranges, or bananas around, and our favorite snack was peanut butter and crackers. She despaired of me and my peculiar eating habits, and I certainly can’t blame her. When I didn’t like something she had made, she might fuss at me, but she would always let me eat something I did like. Mom would have been perfectly happy if all six of us had married and settled down in northern Kentucky where she could preside over all her grandchildren. She did get half her wish since three of her daughters and their families lived within minutes of each other. However, the other three of us, my brother, Bev, and I, scattered all over the country. No doubt that was Mom’s greatest disappointment, but she was an ardent letter writer and kept the Post Office in business with her determination to keep up communications with all of us. I know she wrote at least one letter a week to me from the time I married in 1960 until a few years after Daddy’s death in 1983. Since I lived away from northern Kentucky nearly all my married life, my visits “back home” were necessarily of the overnight variety, and in the years when I had babies with bottles, diapers, and all their paraphernalia to contend with, I really came to appreciate Mom, because she made it so easy to visit her. Of course, her motives were obvious -- she wanted her grandchildren around as often as possible. So she kept bottles and a sterilizer, a high chair, baby bed, playpen, and a supply of diapers on hand, and on a minute’s notice, there was a fully equipped nursery for the littlest visitor. (By the way, Mom was never able to accept Pampers and other disposable diapers; she was just appalled at the wastefulness!) With all her children grown, Mom centered her life around the ones who lived nearby. She was always available to baby-sit grandchildren, and help out when there was illness, car trouble, or other emergencies. She did some outside baby-sitting over the years but never got involved with any other activities. She kept herself busy doing needlework in the winter and canning and freezing food from the garden in summer. She made some absolutely beautiful embroidered quilts -- at first she made six, one for each of us, and we drew straws to see who got which one. Each was a beautiful treasure. Then we kept urging her to make more, and eventually quite a few of the grandchildren also owned one of those family heirlooms. After Daddy’s retirement they did quite a bit of traveling, weekend trips to his favorite places such as Mammoth Cave and Natural Bridge, and to far-off places where we were living, or even where we weren’t. Mom kept track, and I think there were only about four states of the forty-eight she had never visited -- I can’t claim that record. In 1977 when Connie set up a sports lettering business in her home, Mom started helping out with overloads of work, cutting out letters by the hour. As Mom became unable to do the work to suit Connie’s needs, she still wanted to do it to keep busy, so Connie would generously send work for Mom to do -- just cutting out letters that Connie would never use, but Mom never knew it. For Mom’s 75th birthday in January 1991, my sisters orchestrated a lovely celebration. Doing most of the cooking themselves, they put together a delectable feast in the reception hall of the Erlanger Methodist Church. My next sister prepared a magnificent “time line” tribute to Mom, entitled “Beulah: 75 Years of Love and Giving.” Pictures from Mom’s childhood, through all the family years, to the present, illustrated Mom’s life story. It was as professional and impressive a presentation as can be imagined. Daddy didn’t live to see any great-grandchildren, but fortunately Mom was able to enjoy for a short time the first three who lived nearby. My granddaughters lived too far away and she never saw them, but she always enjoyed seeing their pictures and hearing me tell stories about them. While I was compiling this book of family histories, Mom dug into her photo albums as well as her memory to provide me with pictures and facts, and names of other people whom I could ask questions. The one person I was not able to get much information on was Agatha Mattingly Ransdell, Mom’s mother. Mom just couldn’t seem to recall anything interesting to tell about her mother. I have the feeling that Agatha Ransdell may have been very much like her daughter Beulah -- quiet, shy, content to stay in the background, having no particular talents other than the skills of a homemaker, wanting only to be helpful in any way she could. They are the kind of people who are taken for granted so easily because they are as dependable as the air we breathe. Alzheimer’s disease is a tragedy, but not as much for the person who has it as for those who love her. They are the ones who can truly be said to suffer from Alzheimer’s. We had to watch helplessly as everything that was our mother disappeared -- her gift for letter writing, her talent and patience for embroidering her beautiful quilts, her enjoyment of every birthday and holiday, her delight in going out to a restaurant, her savoring of boiling hot coffee, her passion for crossword puzzles, her fondness for keeping track of details, her eager anticipation of each day’s mail and newspaper, her soft-spoken personality, her sense of humor, her love and concern for all of us -- all gone. Alzheimer’s has been referred to as “the long goodbye,” and that is quite appropriate. Long before her death, Mom had slowly slipped away from us. I will always be grateful that Mom kept me so much a part of the family through her letters. I still miss receiving them, and always will, I suppose. I started saving all her letters in about 1975, and by the late 80s when they were coming less and less frequently, I began to think about what a treasure trove of family history they were. All the little details of the lives of the family in northern Kentucky were in those letters. Some things, naturally, we would rather forget, so I went through the letters in 1993 and chose mostly happy or funny or interesting tidbits, and published them in time for Connie to read them, since she and her family were certainly star “characters” in them. All the milestones, big and little, from the first tooth to first jobs and high school graduations of the grandchildren she adored were memorialized in those letters. I considered that book I called “Letters from Mom” to be the greatest tribute I could pay to her. When the time came for a eulogy for Mom, we found it difficult. She wasn’t the dynamic character that either Daddy or Connie had been, but we felt she deserved a very personal tribute from her family every bit as much as Daddy and Connie had. So I asked Homer to speak for all of us, and in my sister’s words, he “took Mom’s very ordinary life and made it, for one day, into something of extraordinary beauty.” Here is his eulogy for Mom, given at her funeral on September 19, 1997: We are not here to mourn the loss of Beulah’s life. We are here to celebrate the life of, in the words of one of her children, “truly a good woman.”
So, let us remember -- let us not mourn. Beulah would want us to remember her with joy.
Hers was a wonderful life, all 80 years. A real person’s life.
Beulah was a real person -- real people go through life practicing principles, values, loving and caring for their family, doing their jobs.
In a time when politicians and do-gooders speak of a return to family values, they could all learn by sitting at Beulah’s feet.
Her life was the practice of values and principles. She was, in the words of Steven Covey, a principle-centered person.
And yet her demeanor was one which I think of in the words of “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” She was quiet, almost timid, some would say shy, but very present in all she did. She always “walked a step behind.” “Always the face without a name.” Truly, “the wind beneath our wings.”
The things that impressed me most --
Her family was her life.
Her brothers and sisters -- Annabelle and Lee, she loved you. Pop, her distant relatives -- all she worked to get to the annual family reunion.
Her immediate family.
She was a beautiful young woman. The fact didn’t go unnoticed by Tom Hopson. Tom (Daddy) fell in love with and married this beautiful, quiet young woman. She had the qualities a young Methodist minister looked for in a wife.
She was a loving, caring, and devoted wife.
She cared for Tom in a way most men could only dream about.
I recall Tom and Beulah visiting and her going to bed with him -- very early by my standards, 9 p.m.
Tom would get out of bed at 5 A.M. and Beulah would without fail fix him his bacon and eggs.
Beulah and Tom produced six beautiful children. She loved her children like few mothers I have seen in my life.
Her life became her children.
I first met Beulah as a young 17-year-old on his first date with her oldest daughter, Jane.
Coming from a family of only three children, I had never witnessed such noise and confusion.
I met Tom (Daddy) for the first time. He never got off the couch. Lord only knows how many of Beulah’s couches Tom would wear out over the years.
Beulah was calm, polite, a reserved friendly. I expected to have her tell me to have her daughter home by a certain time. She didn’t, but the way she looked at me, I knew she had expectations. She didn’t tell me the time, but Jane knew the time.
We would sit in my car in the driveway at the appointed time, and Beulah would remind Jane of the time.
She could make a chicken, a turkey, a piece of meat go farther than any woman I have ever met. She could feed 8 people on less money than most people could feed two people on.
The kids still talk about Mom’s green beans, Mom’s meatloaf, Mom’s butterscotch pie ... etc.
Her canned goods will always be remembered. Blackberry picking, jellies and jams, all favorites.
The holidays were special times for Mom’s feasts…their recollection of pumpkin pie, minced pie, etc.
She also raised the little extra money babysitting (50 cents an hour), pinching pennies to provide for the kids’ special needs -- dates, proms, etc.
She made them quality, one-of-a-kind items that they will treasure for a lifetime. Her world class quilts come to mind. Jane and I get more compliments from the quilt she made for Jane which adorns one of our guest bedroom beds.
She loved her 12 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren. She mentioned her grandmother’s charm bracelet was the most expensive thing she ever wore when she put the 12th charm in place. There was a message in that statement.
Church was an extension of her family. She loved, as she called it, the Erlanger Methodist Church. She loved the old hymns. She knew the church families. She cared for them and kept up with their successes and challenges.
Yet, she was always in the background, playing the supporting role. She sat in the back and left as soon as services were over. She was not one to engage in small talk.
You could go to Beulah for help and you could plan on receiving help.
She had a select number of friends outside the family. She often spoke of her friend Alene Poe, who is here, as her best friend in the world.
I reviewed Jane’s work “Letters from Mom.” She wrote Jane as we moved around the country, always keeping us up to date on the family, keeping us part of the family. I suggest when you remember Mom, Grandma, Great-Grandma, you read her letters, for they say so much about this “truly good woman.”
I have chosen to read a letter written to Beulah by one of her children and she kept it because it was written on Mother’s Day and was and is very special.
[Here he read a letter that Connie wrote to Mom one Mother’s Day.]
Isn’t that beautiful? Doesn’t it say what each of us feels, but are not able to express in words? Connie wrote that letter relating to her Mom the very things she had learned from Mom.
Yes, Beulah loved her family --father, mother, sisters and brothers, husband, her children, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
At this special time to remember, I would change one word in Connie’s closing sentences to Mom. Mom, thanks for being there for us every time we needed you. We really love you. We never knew how much until we remember.
Documentation: Kenton County marriage certificate of Thomas J. Hopson, Jr. and Beulah Frances Ransdell. |
End Notes
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[1]
Hopson family Bible in my possession. Entries in handwriting of
Thomas J. Hopson, Sr. [3] 1935 Harveyan, yearbook of Morris Harvey College, p. 35. [4] Diploma, in my files. [5] Diploma, in my files. |
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-- Any corrections, additions, and kind, constructive criticism are welcome. Full credit will be given for anything you submit. --
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© 2004 JANE MARIE HOPSON MCCLURE |
