John William "Jack" HOPKIRK & Priscilla GREELEY HOPKIRK
Jack was born 22 May 1926 in New York, New York to Howard HOPKIRK and Ruth Lavinia HATHAWAY. Jack was the middle child, born between older sister Dorothy and younger sister Ellie.
Jack married the love of his life, Priscilla Marguerite
GREELEY in 1957, and together they spent 49 years
until Jack's passing on 22 February 2006 in Media, Pennsylvania.
Priscilla was born in Schenectady, N.Y., and grew up in Boston and
Belmont, Mass., the only child of Arthur Lewis GREELEY, a chemistry
instructor and textbook editor, and his wife Ella Marguerite, a
librarian and amateur artist.
Jack was in the US Army during World War II and fought in Germany.
Both Jack and Priscilla were political science professors,
Jack for 31 years at Widner University, and Priscilla for many years at
Villanova, where she was a trailblazer for women's rights.
Jack and Priscilla collaborated on a book called the "The Blue Route:
The Politics of Road Building from 1927 to 1991. From one of the
obituaries we find this funny quip by Priscilla during the opening of
the bitterly opposed highway on a very cold day in December 1991.."I
couldn't help thinking this morning that some of the Blue Route
opponents probably said, 'It'll be a cold day in hell before the Blue
Route opens.' "
To learn more about Jack's interesting life, you can read these two obituaries. This obit 1 and obit 2.
To read about Priscilla's amazing life go to this link for her obituary.
Here is a photo of Jack and Priscilla
from the "Hopkirk Convention" in Stratford, New Zealand in 2000,
bringing together for the only time the descendants of 4 of the
brothers born in the early 1800's to William Hopkirk & Isabella
Home. At the bottom of this linked page is
a photo of William and Isabella's family home as it looks today in
Gattonside, Scotland and a photo circa 1910. This would have been the
house in which the 4 brothers would have grown up, and in 2000 after
being separated for 166 years, the descendants reunited. There is a map drawn by Joseph Hopkirk,
a son of brother Alexander, showing the location of the house as he
remembered it as a child. In 1880 the property was sold to the
Alexander's brother-in-law Robert Spottiswoode. The convention photo is
of
all the descendants and spouses who trace their ancestry back to
brother John Hopkirk(1809-1875) who traveled to the USA in 1834 with
brother William and William's wife.
In the middle row,
Jack is 2nd from the left, with his sister Ellie to the left and his
sister Dorothy to the right, and for some unknown reason Priscilla is
at the other end of the 2nd row. Jack is the only male in the 2nd row.
For other pictures from the 2000 Hopkirk Convention, including
descendants of brother William and those of the two brothers who moved
to New Zealand, Alexander and Robert in the 1870's go here.
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This page was last updated on 13 August 2021