Nana Hop

My father’s mother was Joyce Arlene (Oldenquist) Hopkins, always called Nana Hop.  Nana was mother to six children of her own and mothered several more during her lifetime.  Nana was a great storyteller and had some pretty interesting stories to tell.  She was born in Concord, Massachusetts on 5 March 1932.  One of her earliest jobs waitressing at Longfellow’s Wayside Inn

Nana waitressed here

in adjacent Sudbury resulted in a Johnny-Cash-style “one piece at a time” collection of silverware and “china” that may or may not be still used by our family on special occasions.

Nana and her sister Aunt Gerry both left Concord with their husbands and families and moved to houses within about a five minute walk of one another on Temple Road in New Ipswich, New Hampshire.  Pool parties at Aunt Gerry and Uncle Dick’s house in the summertime made long memories for the grandchildren.  At one point while living in New Ipswich, Nana worked as a bookkeeper for a firm in Rhode Island — what a daily commute that must have been.  She would later relate that she kept two sets of books for them and discovered that she was working for the Mafia.

Nana was always well-dressed and accessorized.  She was somehow uniquely able to project an image of understated class even though she never enjoyed great wealth.

Nana’s father and mother could scarcely have been more different in terms of background.  Use the Oldenquist and Elmes drop-downs from “Nana Hop” at the top of the page.