A person praised for “a career in volunteer work” is generally unencumbered by paid employment. But Esther A. H. Hopkins (CAS’47), career volunteer, has only recently retired as scientist and lawyer.

Esther Hopkins (CAS'47): "I like having a voice in what's going on." Photo by Jim Flynn.

By the early sixties, when she enrolled at Yale, Hopkins had a B.A. from Boston University and an M.S. from Howard University, both in chemistry. She had been a university faculty member, research chemist, and biophysicist, and had a small son who often came with her to campus (“We were Yale’s oddest couple”). Her husband, Ewell, was a social worker and minister, which meant limited household income and additional wifely responsibilities (“People came for dinner; I got very good at meatloaf”). She returned to the Boston area with a Yale M.S. and Ph.D. and joined Polaroid Corporation. When her work expanded into management and product development she earned a J.D. at Suffolk University in the traditional three years while employed full time, and became a patent attorney. In 1989, as her BU classmates began thinking about retirement, she retired from Polaroid — and within a year was deputy general counsel at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Health.

Meanwhile, there has been her volunteer career, which has included, along with innumerable committee appointments, service on the policy-making boards of the American Chemical Association (for thirty years), First Parish Church of Newton, YMCA of the USA, Eastern Massachusetts Junior Achievement, Clara Barton Camp for Girls with Diabetes, Regional Laboratory for Educational Improvement of the Northeast and the Islands, Association of Yale Alumni, Unitarian-Universalist Association, and League of Women Voters in Framingham, Massachusetts. “I like having a voice in what’s going on,” she says.

In 1999 she became Framingham’s first African-American selectman, having run on a platform emphasizing civility and cooperation. Since last year she has been chairman of the board, a volunteer position that consumes Tuesday evening, Wednesday, much of Thursday, and plenty of other time through the week; even in a town as large as Framingham, citizens know where to find their selectmen to voice ideas and complaints — and they do.

Then there’s her service to BU — an entire volunteer career in itself — with the Howard Thurman Center, her College of Arts and Sciences class, the CAS Alumni Association, and the Boston University Alumni (BUA) association, which she headed from 1983 to ’85. She’s been a University trustee for twenty years and is a member of its Executive Committee and chair of the Academic Affairs Committee. Her leadership honors, mounting up since she was an undergraduate, have grown into an array of Woman of the Year designations, Who’s Who listings, and service recognitions, including BU’s Alumni Award.

Ewell Hopkins, Jr., graduated from the School of Management in 1982; his wife, Kimberley Cartwright (daughter of John Cartwright [STH’57, GRS’72], Martin Luther King Professor Emeritus), graduated from the College of Communication in 1984.

Hopkins’s multifaceted career and five college degrees were inspired by her parents, household servants determined that their children have an education and a home. So when the family home was sold recently, she used her share of the proceeds to establish a charitable gift annuity that will fund awards to members of under-represented minorities who are at BU studying science and technology. “I couldn’t afford to give full scholarships,” she says, “but sometimes someone needs just a little bit more.” The awards will be made in her parents’ names. “That’s better than tombstones.”

— Natalie Jacobson McCracken

More information about establishing a charitable gift annuity is available from Mary H. Tambiah in the Office of Gift and Estate Planning, One Sherborn Street, Boston, MA 02215; 617-353-2254 or 800-645-2347.