Hey Dad

One hundred and two years ago on April 9, 1924, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby boy entered the world in a place named Waycross, Georgia. The second son of Mitchell and Reba Hopper who were logging that an airport could be built. Mitchel from Perry County, Alabama and Reba from Bibb County, Alabama traveled to Georgia with four small children and expecting a fifth. That little boy born on April 9 is my dad, Mitchel Clark Hopper.

There is a photograph of Mitchel and Reba (Granny) standing beside a wagon loaded with one huge log pulled by two long horned steers. Not long after dad’s birth one of the steers that pulled the log wagon gored grandaddy Hopper rippling his stomach. This was the 1920’s and his injury was severe. Their logging endeavor ended and they moved back to Perry County Alabama where grandad spent life as an invalid. Granny and five children became sharecroppers in rural Alabama.

One morning as Uncle James, sixteen years old, and dad, eleven years old, were digging post holes for a fence when they heard a loud explosion inside the house they rented. As Uncle James and dad entered the living room they saw blood, skin, and brain material dripping from the ceiling. I have pictured that scene ever since I first heard dad tell it. That was a horrific and terrifying moment for anyone, especially family.

The struggle of the Hopper family was hard. Granny Hopper sharecropping with nine folks trying to make a living. I written this before- dad said they were so poor that when they slaughtered hogs all they threw away was the squeal. Every part of the hog was used. I know I used to help Granny Hopper sling chitterlings (clean hog intestines).

Hard years passed quickly, Uncle James was drafted and fought in WWII witnessing the horror and gore of combat. When dad turned eighteen on April 9, 1942, the next week he went for basic training and eventually North Africa to serve under General George C. Patton.

As the Allies moved north, dad went to Italy. There he received two Purple Hearts. One was from a machine gun as bullets ripped his stomach under his heart to his groin making a large S which called dad superman. He lay in a foxhole bleeding as German soldiers using bayonets made sure that soldiers were dead. Dad used two dead soldiers in the foxhole to shield him from the bayonets. He felt the bayonet penetrate one soldier as the second penetrated to other one. When the German soldiers queried about dad being dead or not one said he was and they moved to another foxhole. Dad knew enough German to understand God spared him.

The second Purple Heart was for shrapnel from a grenade riddling his body. One piece of shrapnel lodged at the base of his skull near the spinal cord in operatable. You could feel the knot.

While in Italy, the German Army captured dad. Dad and several other men were loaded and carried to hill to be killed. Realizing that they were about to be executed, dad and a few other country boys decided to make break and run. Dad said everyone ran in different directions. He said the bullets buzzed by him like angry bumble bees. Escaping and an old Italian farmer hid him in a hay barn for three months. His was listed as missing in action.

Dad shared many war stories. They were humorous and very few were about the horror and gore. I would ask how many enemy he killed and he would say, “We were following orders and so were they. We just shot at one another.”

On dad’s 102^nd birthday I thought about things he taught me. I was the first born and was training ground and learning curve for dad. I realized from a young age that dad lived his life without a dad. He spoke of grandad often. That was one of my biggest reasons for wanting to spend time with dad.

Every time he went somewhere besides work, I wanted go. One time I was anxious that when he said I could go I slammed the front door of the house on the fingers of my right hand. When I yanked them from the door I pulled the fingernail from my middle finger. It bled and throbbed for hours, but I was with dad. I was worth the pain. As a little boy I wanted to cry. I wanted dad to be proud I was though, stupid but tough.

I wanted to be big and strong like dad. He had large hands that carried many scars. He was respected for his size and strength. Most men feared dad because of his background powerful demeanor. Kids loved the gentle giant, and women were attracted to him.

In nineteen eighty-two doctors diagnosed dad with brain tumors. One, the size of a lemon, was in the frontal of his brain. The other was a pea sized near the pituitary gland near his brain stem. Surgeons were able to remove ninety percent of the lemon sized tumor but could not operate on the pea sized one.

Prognosis was that dad would lose his memory, lose his eyesight, and lose his balance making him unable to walk. As people and churches prayed doctors performed saying that God aided them. After the surgery and during recovery, dad got cold and got out of bed moving it away from the air-conditioner. Nurses panicked. Not too bad for some with no memory, no balance, and no sight. Nurses thought him delirious. He told them he was cold.

Dad was bald before surgery. One day after chemo treatment, my daughter used his head for tic tac do. Dad did well for two years. During that time, he and I would go walking and sharing life. One time at a church cleanup, dad and I headed home. He said, “Son I used to wish I did not have to go to work. Now I wish I could.”

Not long before his passing one morning I went to eat breakfast with mom and dad. Mom said to dad, “Tell Bobby about your dream. He will understand.” Fearing being called stupid or made fun of dad was reluctant to share the dream with me. I said you can share it with me.

Dad said, Last night I dreamed I died and I was going toward a bright light in heaven. As I got closer, I saw Jesus with His arms open. As I got close, He was waving motioning me back tell me it was not time yet. And then I woke up.”

I told him that I believed him and that others had similar testimonies. He smiled and said thanks son.

Dad turned sixty on April 9, 1984, and died eighteen days later on April 27. I held that big old right hand as he took his last breath.

Thank You God for allowing me to spend thirty-one years with dad. I think of him daily. I think of him when I see my brother David who looks like him and my brother Glenn who acts like him. I think of him and how he struggled in life. From age eleven, serving in WWII, and thousands of other things that dad experienced remind me of dad, Mitchel Clark Hopper Jr. known best as JM (Junior Mitchel)

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. Exodus 20:12 KJV

 Here is picture of dad holding me on one of his logging horses. Dad was 6' 3" standing behind "Jabo". Picture taken @ 1954.

 

 

 

  

The Man in the Middle Lives

Today as we celebrate Veteran's Day in the United States, I want to pay tribute to our Veterans. My grand paw Chapman was Veteran of WWI. My Uncle James Hopper was Veteran of WWII (Pacific), Dad was (North Africa and Italy), my uncle J.P. Waldrop and Gerald Chapman were Veterans of Korea. My wife Lisa is a Veteran.

WWII veterans are rapidly disappearing. Veterans are what makes America great. Below is a poem I penned in honor of the men that fought alongside of dad. I hope you read it in honor of those that have now passed and pay tribute on this day to those that are celebrating today.

Appearing as a dark fog drifting from hole to hole

Death, devastation, and destruction shrouded

The sacred ground where demonic fiends

Methodically pierced the hearts of the mutilated

 

Silent are loud bombs, rattling guns, exploding grenades as

Aromas of sulfur, blood, and guts saturate the air along with

Coalescing cries of pain, pleas for help, and begging God

Become quiet as the grim reaper surveys the carnage

 

Enthusiastic agents of death with spikes of demise

See three in another death pit to add to their trophies

Two disfigured youth had given the ultimate sacrifice as

Death laughed when his urchins penetrated their silent hearts

 

One urchin twisted his lethal tool deep into victim’s heart

As his partner made a noxious jab in the other victim’s heart

Shielded by the prayers of a mother on her knees and far away

Her son lies motionless beneath two that died to set people free

 

Petrified, the son deciphered enemy idiom concerning his plight

With devious confidence, the urchin replies the third one is ours

Blinded buoyancy does not allow them to see the young man’s verve

Death cannot and will not eradicate a mother’s prayer and true life

 

Anonymous and gone are the two who shielded the man in the middle

Eternal are the praying mother and the son whom she loved

Always present are the agents of evil seeking to kill and destroy

A praying nation will continue to bolster the red, white, and blue

 

The man in the middle left a legacy behind through his children

Teaching them to be responsible citizens for freedom is not free

 

Bobby E. Hopper

 

My daddy was the man in the middle.  Private Mitchell Clark Hopper fought under General Patton in North Africa and Italy.  Somewhere in Italy dad lay beneath two dead soldiers in a foxhole.  German machinegun fire ripped open his chest and abdomen.  He pulled dead soldiers together and two German soldiers pierced the fallen soldiers’ hearts.  With a limited knowledge of the German language, he heard them say, “What about the one in the middle?”  “He’s dead.”

Receiving official word that dad was killed in action, Granny Hopper said, “No.  He is alive. I am praying for him.”

The Right to Vote

 It was a November evening in Alabama.  The Hopper family loaded into a 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne and headed to Posey’s Crossroads.  It was Election Day.  Day had changed his election voting location from Randolph, Alabama to Posey’s Crossroads which was less than a half mile from our home.

Dad had moved us back from Beloit, Illinois in March 1960.  Dad had been registered in Randolph even while we lived in Illinois from1957 to 1960.  This had to be 1964 and one of the most memorable moments of my life.

Mom, my sister and two brothers sat in the Chevy as dad entered the polling building which was a car shed which exists until now.  Things in the ballot house started to deteriorate when they refused to allow daddy to vote.    He had returned back to the house to get the legal documents that verified that daddy had changed his voting place.  

Dad walked back into the car shed and produced his documents.  What they told dad was that his name was not in alphabetical order and was added to the back of their registration roaster.  The irony was that dad was registered and all the men running the voting were personal friends with dad.  They often played checkers across the road at our local store/filling station at Land Mart.

There was a big commotion building as faces turned red, shouting continued to get loud, and face to face confrontation grew intense.  Then it happened.  Escalating, dad began to roll up his long-sleeved shirt.  We all sat in the Chevy watching something like at the movie drive end.

Momma said, “Bobby, go get your daddy.  Tell him it is not worth it.”  What those so-called friends of daddy did not realize, they were about to feel the wrath of my dad.  It was a defining moment for the Hopper family.

Dad’s rolling of the sleeves was a signal that some serious “butt kicking” was about to explode.  Mom always bought regular shirts for her Hopper man and his three sons.  They never fit because we were not regular.  We were taller and bigger.  I have pictures of us growing up.  Regardless of the sleeve, short or long were worn one to two rolls on them.  When dad got serious, working or kicking butt, he rolled them higher above the bend of the elbow.

When we lived in Beloit, Illinois, daddy worked at Beloit Ironworks in Beloit Wisconsin.  We lived one block from the state line.  One morning after a midnight shift, a raucous began across the street at a tavern named The Brown Derby.  Police were trying to arrest a drunk.  He had escaped and wound up in our back yard.  He had wrapped his arms around on a utility pole.  There the police had handcuffed him there.

Daddy woke from all the commotion and went out to investigate.  He asked the officers what was happening.  They said they could not put the man in the patrol car.  The drunk did something that most Yankees do not take offence but to Good Old Southern men and boys it is the unpardonable sin.  The drunk what’s it to you SOB as he spat in daddy’s face.

Dad slowly removed his wristwatch and his beloved ruby ring and handed them to one of the bystanders as he rolled up his sleeves.  With one bow to the jaw of the drunk, he slid down the pole, the officers thanked dad, undone the handcuffs, and laid the unconscious twice smashed intoxicated man in the patrol car.

The person that took dad’s ring and watch gave them to mom as the neighbors gave dad an ovation.

I went into the voting shed and took daddy by the hand as he rolled his sleeves.  I was almost twelve years old.  Looking at dad with eyes of pity and respect I said, "Momma said to come on that they are not worth it,” She knew dad would do serious damage and be in serious trouble.

The real damage was that we spent the rest of the evening traveling to the county courthouse trying to help daddy vote he never did.

That is one of few times I witnessed my daddy being hurt.  We heard him telling the poll men that he fought and was wounded in WWII, that he paid his pole tax (abolished in 1966), and that he was registered.  None of the men at the polls had ever served in the military.  From that day on, dad never respected or had any relationship with those men.

Not long ago someone posted an Easter picture (below) of my sister, brothers, and me.  People wanted to know, “What’s up with these Hopper boys and rolled up sleeves.”   As Hank Williams Jr., another Alabama boy would say, “It a family tradition.”  We all still do it even though our lovely wives buy us shirts that fit.  It’s a habit and reminder of the right to vote.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 

II Timothy 1:7 KJV 

It is joy to the just to do judgement: but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity. 

Proverbs 21:15 KJV

Notice the sleeves on the Hopper boys

Time With Daddy

I loved spending time with my daddy.  His life experiences were something that I wanted to know and to share.  He grew up during the Great Depression without a dad.  Granddad Hopper committed suicide when daddy was eleven years old in 1935.  Granddad Hopper, gored by a steer and suffering a stroke, was plagued with depression and paralysis. By his early forties, he shot himself in the head with a shotgun. He believed he had no reason to live.

Granny Hopper, dad’s mother, was a sharecropper, widow woman, and a mother of eight during the Great Depression and daddy would tell how the family struggled to survive.  I remember one of the houses that Granny Hopper lived in for many years.  It was high off the ground, had wide crakes in the floor, and had no inside plumbing.  In fact, the kitchen was a separate building adjacent to the house.

I thought it amazing that dad lived there most of his life.  I was glad that it was not the house where granddad killed himself.  I think that is why we lived in our house for many years without many modern amenities that other folks had, such as hot water and a bathroom. Dad was not accustomed to them.

Dad served in the Army during the second Great World War.  He had been to Texas, California, North Africa, and Italy.  He had been wounded by an exploding grenade and ripped open by a machine gun blast.  He was left for dead and had been captured.  He was in the hospital when General Patton became infamous for slapping a soldier.

I thought daddy was intriguing.  He had been to so many exotic and interesting places.  He knew so many different people from all walks of life.  He would tell us some of the most interesting stories.

I loved to lay out in the yard with daddy in the evenings.  He would come home from a hard day of logging.  I have a vivid memory of him coming home all sweaty and dirty from working in the woods.  After supper, daddy loved momma’s cooking, we would get an old blanket and lay in the yard and watch the sunset. 

The hill where we lived provided the most gorgeous sunsets.  In the twilight, we would listen as the crickets and frogs serenaded us.  We would watch the bats dive for bugs as the stars began illuminating the heavens.  Daddy would talk of how the Old Master created all the heavens.

On our backs and looking in to heaven, we watched falling stars, planes traveling to and fro, orbiting satellites, which he called Sputniks, and sometimes far off lightning.  He would thump a cigarette into the grass and tell us that the crickets were having a weenie roast as the smoke swirled upward.

When daddy started to work evening shift (three to eleven p.m.), our times outside in the yard were fewer, but we spent time out there when we could.  I could not wait for daddy to get home when he worked evenings.  I was happy to see that he came home.  I worried that something might happen to him because he worked with heavy equipment at the rock plant in Calera.

Daddy would always have something left over in his lunch bucket.  It was usually a Colonial honey bun which he picked up on the way to work and did not have time to eat it or may he left it to see the scuffle between my brothers, sister, and I to be the first to open it.  It was fun to share the honey bun, but it felt wonderful that daddy was home.  Oh, the joy of seeing daddy come home.  I knew daddy had to leave home to earn a living for the family and I knew he would come back.  It reminds me of Jesus’ promise.

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also (John 14:2-3 KJV).

Why I honor Memorial Day

The Man in the Middle Lives

Appearing as a dark fog drifting from hole to hole

Death, devastation, and destruction shrouded

The sacred ground where demonic fiends

Methodically pierced the hearts of the mutilated

Silent are loud bombs, rattling guns, exploding grenades as

Aromas of sulfur, blood, and guts saturate the air along with

Coalescing cries of pain, pleas for help, and begging God

Become quiet as the grim reaper surveys the carnage

Enthusiastic agents of death with spikes of demise

See three in another death pit to add to their trophies

Two disfigured youth had given the ultimate sacrifice as

Death laughed when his urchins penetrated their silent hearts

One urchin twisted his lethal tool deep into victim’s heart

As his partner made a noxious jab in the other victim’s heart

Shielded by the prayers of a mother on her knees and far away

Her son lies motionless beneath two that died to set people free

Petrified, the son deciphered enemy idiom concerning his plight

With devious confidence, the urchin replies the third one is ours

Blinded buoyancy does not allow them to see the young man’s verve

Death cannot and will not eradicate a mother’s prayer and true life

Anonymous and gone are the two who shielded the man in the middle

Eternal are the praying mother and the son whom she loved

Always present are the agents of evil seeking to kill and destroy

A praying nation will continue to bolster the red, white, and blue

The man in the middle left a legacy behind through his children

Teaching them to be responsible citizens for freedom is not free

My daddy was the man in the middle.  Private Mitchell Clark Hopper fought under General Patton in North Africa and Italy.  Somewhere in Italy dad lay beneath two dead soldiers in a foxhole.  German machinegun fire ripped open his chest and abdomen.  He pulled dead soldiers together and two German soldiers pierced the fallen soldiers’ hearts.  With a limited knowledge of the German language, he heard them say, “What about the one in the middle?”  “He’s dead.”

Receiving official word that dad was killed in action, Granny Hopper said, “No.  He is alive. I am praying for him.”