Stanford W. Hopkins (1919-1922) 

Remarks by Carl Reed in program for Thanksgiving Day 1977 dedication of Dr. Stanford W. Hopkins Stadium

Respected by scores of Marblehead High gridmen, a source of strength and reassurance to those who may have required his ministrations for wounds of this forenoon and henceforth the high school's temple de sport off Village Street, to be known, officially, as the Dr. Stanford W. Hopkins Stadium. Held in equally high regard by older generations of Marbleheaders, sobriquet no less cherished than God, Country and flag in a community where 'The hell I pitch it" has the same significance as "Remember the Alamo" in San Antonio, articulating only the highest standards of a profession to which he dedicated himself more years ago than he may care to recall, he elected to resign as team physician at the end of the 1976 season. Tho' bowing out amid an afterglow of 40 years, all of them enriched by box-car loads of treasured memories and good will, Marblehead's disciple of Hippocrates and Galen has yet to kick a couple of long-nurtured habits, one the game of football itself, the other roaming the sidelines from goal line to goal line as he was observed doing at several of Marblehead high's games this season. In top form while performing his version of the sidelines Shop he's among those genteelists who look upon football as the fountain from which life flows, the frosting on the cake of human endeavor. Consequently it should come as no surprise to learn that he's completely out of tune with admonitions from the stands, "Croak the bums." Chief among them, players and officials usually qualifying as the prospective croakees. "in my opinion," he muttered one Saturday afternoon a couple of years ago, "there's no place in football for that kind of talk. It's cheap, it's not good for the kids to hear, it's repulsive to decent-thinking people out for an afternoon of enjoyment, it's not good for a game in which generations of boys have learned to take the bitter with the sweet, a lesson that'll stay with them the rest of their lives probably because they learned it the hard way, preferring to hang in there when they could have taken the easy way out." "As with life," he reflected, "there's no easy way to anything worthwhile, and that's why I don't like to see the game of football cheapened by a few tin horns who probably couldn't have made the Rinky-Dinks - not if their lives depended on it." A graduate of Milton Academy, his subsequent allegiance to Harvard (Marblehead High the possible exception), is no less today than in days of yore, when concepts, tackling, reverses and busted beaks. It may be added they were days when a number of his contemporaries were illuminating Harvard's grid history with their Homeric exploits inside a Coliseum-like structure know to Harvardians and Non-Harvardians alike merely as The Stadium. Tradition, prestige, pride, names, big named in the annals of American football, they're all there, long since vital components . in the University's motto Veritasp. Physician, sportsman, gentleman, and individual of unquestioned integrity, Dr. Hopkins rates as an institution, the kind of which society would continue to be the beneficiary as it melts into the imponderables, the invariables of a brand new age, now less than 25 years distant.