Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Edward Ralston HOOPES
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - February 8, 1991
Deceased Name: EDWARD R. HOOPES, 75, ARTIST, ARTISAN, TEACHER AT CHELTENHAM HIGH
When he taught art at Cheltenham High School, Edward Ralston Hoopes kept the display case outside Room 258 filled with silver pins, ceramic cups, earrings or wooden bowls his students had crafted.
He always loved to show off students' work, said Bob Trimble, director of external education at the school. "He always used to have an art show in the spring for paintings, sketches, industrial arts. He started that. too."
Mr. Hoopes, 75, a silversmith, painter and cabinetmaker, and the chairman of the art department at Cheltenham for 15 years, died Wednesday at his home in Gladwyne.
He taught at Cheltenham for 32 years before retiring 11 years ago. After he retired, he sometimes filled in as a substitute teacher at Lower Merion High School.
He had been scheduled to teach there the day he died.
"Kids loved him," said Trimble. "He was a perfectionist. He expected an awful lot from them, and the students he had were very creative." His students were not all "kids." For years he taught jewelry-making on Monday and Thursday nights at the adult school.
At Cheltenham, he enlarged the art department by adding jewelry-making and ceramics. He had a kiln installed in the art room, and opened a balcony outside the school to enable students to sketch and paint in the open air.
Mr. Hoopes was a craftsman in his own right, making jewelry for friends, building furniture for his family and modernizing and adding to a 150-year-old farmhouse his family owned in Gladwyne.
Tall and lean, Mr. Hoopes looked the part of the craftsman-artist. He wore wire-framed glasses, smoked a pipe and sported a neatly trimmed mustache and, until recently, a graying beard.
Born and raised in West Chester, he was a 1935 graduate of the Westtown School. He received his bachelor's degree from Philadelphia College of Art in 1941 and his master's from Temple University's Tyler School of Art in 1962.
His son-in-law, Stephen Cadwalader, said he had painted earlier in his career, and many of his still-life watercolors grace the walls of the family home.
But more of his time was devoted to silversmithing, which he did in a small workshop next to his kitchen.
There, he fashioned silver trays, a chalice for a synagogue on the Main Line and numerous rings, pins and other jewelry for relatives and friends.
"He was a real craftsman," said Cadwalader. "He did a lot of woodworking things - tables, cabinets, antique pieces. They were delicate and simple pieces, made of mahogany, oak, walnut and ebony."
The pieces reflected a plain, Quaker style preferred by Mr. Hoopes.
And he also had his hand in bigger projects.
When his family moved into the old stone house in Gladwyne, it was too small and did not even have a bathroom. Over the next 40 years, he built a frame two-story addition with a living room, bedroom and bath.
He was not too busy to help neighbors. When they needed advice - or a hand - building cabinets or benches, he was the one they looked to, Cadwalader said.
"He loved being with children and he would always help out whenever he could," his son-in-law said. That's why Mr. Hoopes sometimes lent a hand building jumps for horse shows put on by the Bridlewild Pony Club when both his daughters were members.
He was an active member of the Better Times Investors, an investment club he helped found 35 years ago and which his wife said was quite successful.
He also belonged to the Society Sons of St. George, a benevolent society that offers help and support to people of English origin, and built a governor's staff of silver and mahogany for the group.
He was a member of the Outreach Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the Radnor Society of Friends.
Surviving are his wife of 40 years, Lorna Berg Hoopes; sons, Ralston R. and Gilbert S.; daughters, Karen Cadwalader and Lisa Rauch, and seven grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. tomorrow at Radnor Friends Meeting, Conestoga and Sproul Roads, Villanova. Burial will be private.
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