Mollie Brown Hopper, who with her husband Bill served as a Presbyterian mission worker in Iran for many years, was interred in the Memorial Garden at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary here July 27. Millie Hopper died earlier this spring at Westminster Gardens in Duarte, Calif. where she and Bill Hopper lived.
A brief service accompanied the interment, led by the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick , former General Assembly stated clerk and world mission director for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Former national staff colleague the Rev. Kathy Lancaster read an account of Mollie's life written by her husband, who was unable to attend due to health reasons.
Mollie was born Sept. 26, 1925 in Stoneboro, Penn. She worked her way through The College of Wooster and then accepted an appointment from the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions to teach at the church’s mission school in Tehran, Iran. Bill Hopper arrived six weeks later to teach at the same school. They were married in Tehran in 1948. They raised three daughters while there.
Back in the U.S., Mollie Hopper served as an elder in congregations in Boise, Idaho; Baltimore; Erie, Penn.; and Louisville. She was active in community organizations such as the YWCA and Habitat for Humanity wherever the Hoppers lived. While in Baltimore she earned a Master's Degree in remedial reading at Johns Hopkins University. While Bill Hopper served on the PC(USA) national staff here, Mollie served as a volunteer in the world mission office.
In retirement at PC(USA)-related Westminster Gardens, Mollie wrote the history of that fabled institution to commemorate its 50th anniversary in 2000.