Barbara Johnson Hopper was recognized for giving family and friends plum jam made with fruit picked from her yard.
Her backyard — filled with lemons, greens, and flowers — supplied her a refuge when she was frightened and wanted to hope to God, mentioned her daughter, Adriane Hopper Williams.
“That’s what she would all the time say, ‘I’ve obtained to go to the Earth,’” Hopper Williams mentioned. “That was her method of simply getting centered.”
Hopper, 81, died of the consequences of COVID-19 on March 26 after spending 5 days within the hospital. Hopper Williams mentioned her household carefully follows the information, and he or she remembered discussing the coronavirus outbreak together with her mom, pondering it wouldn’t hit as near house because it did.
“We’re nonetheless, each evening, watching this information and he or she’s now a type of numbers,” Hopper Williams mentioned.
Hopper was humorous, gregarious, and “the final word producer,” her daughter mentioned.
“She’s the one which introduced folks collectively and knew the right way to encourage folks towards a goal,” Hopper Williams mentioned. “She simply knew the right way to discuss to folks and to get them again on monitor to what actually issues.”
Hopper was born in Milwaukee and studied social work on the College of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1960 she met her husband, Dr. Cornelius Hopper, whereas he was finishing his residency at Milwaukee County Hospital. Cornelius fell in love with Barbara, in addition to his future mother-in-law’s soul meals cooking. Barbara and Cornelius wed in 1964.
When the household moved to Alabama in 1971 for her husband’s new place as medical director of the John Andrew Hospital at Tuskegee Institute, Hopper began the Tuskegee Laboratory and Studying Middle, another faculty, in addition to an actual property enterprise.
In 1979 the household moved to the Bay Space and settled in Oakland, the place she continued to work as an actual property agent whereas additionally founding and taking part in neighborhood teams, and serving on scholarship boards for medical college students. At Church by the Aspect of the Street, which she attended together with her household, she led a yearlong studying of the Bible that ended with a visit to Jerusalem.
She is survived by her husband of 55 years, Cornelius, her two sons Michael and Brian, her daughter, Adriane, and two grandchildren.
“I do know we’re all biased, however for me personally, after I take into consideration a girl of character, integrity, energy, magnificence, grace, knowledge, and charity, that’s who I consider,” Hopper Williams mentioned. “She is my function mannequin.”
Jennifer Gibbs, 67, mentioned she met Hopper via a mutual pal 13 years in the past. Each time Gibbs was sick, Hopper would carry her rooster soup. When Gibbs drove to Ohio to pack up her 93-year-old mom to maneuver in together with her within the Bay Space, Hopper instructed her she’d have dinner ready for them once they arrived.
One of many bridge teams Hopper organized had a Zoom assembly to share how they felt about her after they discovered of her loss of life, Gibbs mentioned. “She was the one,” Gibbs mentioned, “that introduced us all collectively and form of was the glue,” Gibbs mentioned.