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Contact Info
Home Town Mount Carmel, PA
Last Address Livingston, NJ
Date of Passing Sep 15, 1966
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
After retiring from the Navy, he worked as vice president in charge of operations for the Grace Steamship Company until 1964.
He was awarded with Navy Distinguished Service Medal during Cold War and twice with the Legion of Merit for his World War II service, once as Director of Planning and Control in the Bureau of Naval Personnel and once as commanding officer of the light cruiser Cleveland.
He is the namesake of HopwoodJunior High School in Saipan, originally the first institution of higher learning in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which was renamed in his honor in the late 1950s when he was Commanding Officer for the Northern Marianas as CINCPACFLT.
He died at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, New Jersey at the age of 67, and is buried with his wife in ArlingtonNationalCemetery.
He was promoted to vice admiral in 1955 and appointed commander of the First Fleet, then served as deputy chief of naval operations (logistics) from 1957 to 1958.
On February 1, 1958, he was promoted to admiral and appointed commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet (CINCPACFLT), a command that included about 400 ships, half a million men, and 3,000 aircraft. On August 23, the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis erupted when People's Liberation Army forces began shelling Republic of China positions on the disputed islands of Quemoy and Matsu. Hopwood deployed the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to help the Nationalist government protect Quemoy's supply lines, as directed by Admiral Harry D. Felt, Commander in Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC).
In January 1960, Hopwood participated in the first public demonstration of a new Navy communications system that used the moon as a radio relay to exchange teletype messages between Hopwood in Hawaii and Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke in Washington, D.C. In June, he hosted President Dwight D. Eisenhower at Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station when the President took a brief holiday in Hawaii following a trip to the Far East. He was relieved by Admiral John H. Sides on August 30, 1960 and retired from the Navy on September 1.