Ramsey County History – Winter 2018: “Growing Up in St. Paul: Fifteen Minutes with My Dad: Reginald Hopwood”

Growing Up in St. Paul
Fifteen Minutes with My Dad: Reginald Hopwood
Author: Victoria Hopwood

This is a daughter’s tribute to her father, a waiter on the Great Northern Railway’s Empire Builder that ran between Chicago and the two Pacific coast cities of Portland and Seattle via St. Paul. As a railroad man, Reginald Hopwood was never home for very long; thus his daughter didn’t know him as well as her mother. In answer to the question of what this daughter would do if she had fifteen minutes with someone past or living, the author skillfully introduces readers to life in a middle-class African American family in the 1960s and ‘70s. During those years, the Hopwoods lived in five different residences, the first four of which were in the Rondo neighborhood. The fifth house was located, however, outside that redlined community, but the author’s confident and well-educated mother, Lorraine Hopwood, who was a nurse, bought that last house with the help of a supportive white lawyer. By the end of this essay, readers understand why this author would choose to spend fifteen minutes with her dad, if she were ever given the chance.
PDF of Hopwood article