Dorothea N. Hopwood's Obituary
HOPWOOD, DOROTHEA
1917-2010
On February 1st, longtime Miami resident, Dorothea N. Hopwood, passed away in her Coconut Grove home at the age of 92. The daughter of a decorated NYPD detective, she was born Dorothea Lucille Noennich in Brooklyn, New York on Christmas day 1917, grew up in Queens Village, N.Y., and graduated from Adelphi College in 1939. She taught high school English in New York City for two years then moved with her retired parents to Fort Lauderdale in 1942.
With World War II then in progress, Dorothea was employed by Pan American Airways’ Latin American Division in its reservations center in downtown Coconut Grove. Her office was in one of the still-existing buildings now a part of the Coco Walk complex. At the time, Dinner Key, Miami’s present City Hall, was then a busy arrival-departure hub for Pan Am’s Sikorsky and Clipper seaplanes, and the location from which FDR took off for his Casablanca summit with Churchill in January of 1943. She remembered how FDR arrived unannounced by special train to a point next to the Royal Palm Ice House at Douglas Road and U.S. 1 and the tight security which blocked all roads from there to Dinner Key until FDR had passed by.
Later in 1943, Dorothea left Pan American and returned to live with her parents in Fort Lauderdale where she was soon employed at the newly commissioned Naval Air Station on the site of what is now the Fort Lauderdale International Airport. It was while at NAS Fort Lauderdale that she met and married William (Bill) Hopwood, the Naval Air Station Communications Officer.
After the war years, Dorothea and her husband settled in Coconut Grove and in 1948 built a home designed by architect Alfred Browning Parker where they have since lived for 62 years. In the 1980s she chaired the South Coconut Grove Crime Watch and for her civic work in that capacity received awards from Crime Watch of Dade County, the Coconut Grove Chamber of Commerce, and from the U.S. Department of Justice, DEA, for “outstanding contributions in the Field of Drug Law Enforcement.”
Dorothea was in the long-time home she loved when she passed away peacefully after a long illness. She is survived by her husband of over 66 years, William J. Hopwood, and by her three nephews, Richard Noennich of Navarre, Florida, William Noennich, of Atlanta, and Donald Noennich of Miami. Services will be private.
sig. VAN ORSDEL CORAL GABLES
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