LUCY HOPMAN

HOPMAN--Lucy.

Lucy Pope Hopman, of Largo, Florida, passed away on August 31, 2018 at the age of 98, grateful for the gift of a long and eventful life. The widow of Australian tennis great Harry Hopman, Lucy strove after his death in 1985 to preserve his memory. With the founding of the annual Hopman Cup tournament in his honor in 1989, she traveled to Perth, Australia for 26 consecutive years, earning herself the informal title "Queen of the Cup." At her last trophy- ceremony speech in January 2014, she once again pronounced Perth her "second home," and between the lines reminded fans of her and Harry's deep attachment to one another. Lucy Pope was born in Bass Rocks, MA on July 27, 1920, the daughter of Ralph Linder Pope and Elizabeth Wightman Pope. After graduating from the Beaver Country Day School in Brookline, she volunteered at the North Bennet Street Industrial School in Boston's North End, where she organized a teenagers' drama club. She had developed a passion for the theater as a girl, and as founder and president, at age 15, of Beaver's Katherine Hepburn Fan Club, she was invited backstage with the other club members to meet their heroine after a performance of "Jane Eyre" at Boston's Colonial Theater in 1937. At age 21, six weeks before Pearl Harbor, she married Matthew Bernard ("Ben") Fox, a national and North American pairs ice-skating champion (with Joan Tozzer) from the Boston Skating Club. Together they had two sons, David Pope Fox and Richard Wightman Fox. In 1953, the family moved to Los Angeles, where Lucy took up an array of volunteer service positions. In the 1960s she focused on the PTA, becoming president of the University Council, covering University, Hamilton, and Palisades High Schools. True to her dramatic roots, she helped mount, and danced in, a satirical western musical "How the West Was Lost," performed in 1965 at schools across Southern California. Her marriage to Ben Fox having ended in divorce, Lucy was wed in 1971 to the widower Harry Hopman, who had moved to the United States and become a professional tennis instructor. Lucy and Harry spent the early 1970s on Long Island, where Hopman oversaw the early training of John McEnroe, Vitas Gerulaitis, and Mary Carillo at the Port Washington Tennis Academy. In 1975, the Hopmans moved to the Gulf Coast of Florida, where Lucy put her organizational skills to good use helping to manage the Harry Hopman International Tennis program, first at Treasure Island and then at the Bardmoor Resort in Largo, Florida. On Bardmoor's 40 courts Harry trained standout players from around the world, including Andrea Jaeger, Jim Courier, Jennifer Capriati and Ramesh Krishnan. At Hopman's death in 1985, his tennis camp relocated to the Saddlebrook Resort in Wesley Chapel, and Lucy took up her three-decade quest to keep his name and legacy alive. Lucy Hopman is survived by her son Richard (her son David passed away in 2016), three grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Donations in her name will be gratefully accepted by Andrea Jaeger's Little Star Foundation. Andrea's spirited work with stricken and disadvantaged children had long touched Lucy's heart, as it had many of Andrea's fellow players. Contributions can be made online littlestar.org or sent directly to Andrea Jaeger, Little Star Foundation, 174 Watercolor Way, Suite 103 B343, Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32459 (Andrea can also be reached at AJLittlestar@gmail.com