GROVER LAMRO HOOPES
Grover Lamro Hoopes was born in Thatcher, Graham County, Arizona on March 13, 1920 to Grover Hoopes and Nora Estelle Lamoreaux. He was called Lamro, which is an abbreviation of his mother's family name.
Lamro attended school in Thatcher except for the two years that his family lived at Ft. Grant, where his father taught manual arts to the boys at the reform school there. Lamro graduated from Thatcher High School and then served a full-time mission in the Southern States. He labored in Florida and Mississippi. After his mission he was drafted into the U.S. Army, as World War II had started.
At a stake dance in Safford prior to going into the service, Lamro met a pretty high school student, Elaine Russell. They wrote during the three years that Lamro spent in North Africa, Italy and sailing around the Panama Canal to the Philippines and Japan. In the Army, Lamro was a medic and was awarded a Soldier's Medal for saving an Italian man's life by carrying him out of a mine field. Shortly after he was discharged from the Army, Lamro married Elaine in the Mesa Temple on Dec 5, 1945.
Lamro went to work for the Arizona Department of Horticulture at the Inspection Station east of Safford. He stopped cars to see if they had any plants that were infested with dangerous insects or diseases.
The young family lived in a rent house belonging to Elaine's parents in Safford while Lamro was building his family a home on First Street in Thatcher. The land was given to him as a wedding present by his parents. This land had originally belonged to his grandparents, George and Charlotte Iris Curtis Hoopes. Their first child, John Lamro, was born in 1946, followed by a daughter, Margaret Jean in 1947.
After a few years working at the Inspection Station, Lamro went to work for Brooks Lumber Company and worked there for a number of years as a bookkeeper. While he was at Brooks Lumber, Lamro learned to work with glass. During the evenings he glazed, or installed glass in many of the new homes being built in the Gila Valley.
Two other children were born to Lamro and Elaine, Jan Marie in 1952 and Fred Russell in 1954.
After a few years Lamro left Brooks Lumber Company to become an agent for Farm Bureau Insurance. His office was located in Thatcher in the front of his father's hardware store. Lamro also held a contract with the state to clean the Employment Office in Safford, where his father-in-law worked, a part time job Lamro did early in the morning before work and on weekends for many years. Because the insurance business required working during the evenings, he quit this job and was again hired by the State to work at the Inspection Station, where he became the station manager until he retired in 1988.
Lamro always enjoyed hunting and fishing, which he learned from his father. He went deer hunting each year for at least a week, camping out and riding horses, and it was a highlight of his life. He also liked to trap fur bearing animals, carefully skinning them and stretching the skins to sell to the fur buyer. Lamro served in various church callings, including being a stake missionary, teacher of the Senior Aaronic, in Scouting and as a faithful home teacher.
After the death of his father, Lamro obtained some farm land adjacent to his property. On this property he raised hay for calves and horses, for which he built a barn and corral. After his retirement, Lamro has spent full time with his animals, trapping, fishing and raising a large garden, including okra, each year.