HOPKINS, P. F.

HOPKINS, BARR

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 11/11/2014 at 15:44:17

The Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
Saturday, February 08, 1941, Page 16

THEY STARTED HERE
No. 46 in a Mason City Series of Success Stories

P. F. Hopkins on Control Board

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The biggest business in the United States these days is not automobile manufacturing or movie making. It isn't railroading nor textile manufacturing.

It's government. And not only is government the biggest industry; it's the most important. For without capable government, business and all other manner of social relations would stagnate and die.

But by some quirk of human understanding, public servants with the exception of a limited few at the top are not generally recognized by the public as are men of similar ability and standing in private enterprise.

One able public servant, who migh have made a lot more money by bending his talents in private business is P. F. Hopkins, well known to many Manson Cityans as an outstanding city manager here from 1927 to 1933.

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Mr. Hopkins, now a member of the Iowa board in control of state institutions, has made an outstanding record in city, state and federal government positions. A democrat in politics, he is so able that at republican administration has a place for him in the running of the state government.

The Mason Cityan was born at Colo, Dec. 31, 1883. He grew up there, attending the Colo school and also St. Ignatius college in Chicago for two years.

In 1906 he was married to Miss Margaret Barr and went into farming near Colo for six years. But the farm couldn't hold him and in 1913 he found himself at Iowa State college studying civil engineering. In 1916, as the shadows of war drew nearer, he won his bachelor of science degree.

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While at Iowa State Mr. Hopkins worked summers for the Iowa highway commission and the college engineering experiment station. He taught in the civil engineering department during the last three months of his senior year and in the 1916-17 school year he continued as an instructor at the college.

Then he returned to the highway commission for a time but resigned his post to teach at the University of Wisconsin, taking a little post graduate work in sanitary engineering at the same time.

In February, 1918, the United States was really beginning to be geared up for its war effort and P. F. Hopkins left Wisconsin to enter the employ of the United States government. The war department placed him as engineer on construction and later on operation of the U. S. explosive plant "C" at Nitro, W. Va.

There he stayed until the middle of 1910 (sic), when he resigned as chief enginer of water, sewers and gas to become city manager at Ames and began a long and valuable career as a public administrator.

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While at Ames - 1921 it was - Mr. Hopkins completed the requirements for a professional degree in civil engineering and was awarded that degree by the college.

In 1927 Mason City turned to the city manager system of handling its affairs and P. F. Hopkins was named to pioneer in what for Mason City was a new field.

Going to work with a vengeance, the city manager installed the new system and got it functioning perfectly.

He was here for six years and in that time reduced the city debt by hundreds of thousands of dollars, revised the tax system without increasing taxes any and at the same time gave Mason City the best municipal government it had ever had.

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And he was a success in other ways, too, as the widespread respect and admiration for him will testify. His fine character and friendliness won him a host of friends.

Nor has he forgotten Mason City, for the Iowa offical register lists it as his home.

Nineteen thirty-three brought Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Federal agencies were established to meet the emergency of the acute econmonic distress in which the nation found itself and to bring back normal times if possible.

One of these was the public works administration, perhaps the greatest of all the New Deal inspired agencies. The PWA was that agency responsible for the thousands of new postoffices, bridges, swimming pools and other public projects - the Mason City library, the junior high schools and other local projects among them.

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PWA appropriations were made by the billions by congress and it took capable men at the head of the various state setups to handle the administration of millions of dollars.

Iowa's PWA administrator was named Aug. 15, 1933. He was Mason City's P. F. Hopkins.

Mr. Hopkins served in this position until near the end of 1937 when the PWA state office was closed and regional offices were set up to finish the PWA program.

In 1938 Mr. Hopkins became director of the Iowa state planning board. It was the last year this organization functioned and Mr. Hopkins modestly says that he was nothing more than an "observer or hitchhiker."

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Be that as it may, the fact remains that the planning board in its final year of operation turned in a remarkably fine job, preparing reports on secondary roads, truck tax legislation, highway safety, farm tenancy, soil conservation and the report on the board of control institutions by the committee on public health.

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"I wish to emphasize that I claim no credit for these reports," the Mason Cityan says. "They were made by the staff members working under the direction of highly competent and qualified committees."

At any rate Mr. Hopkins was director of the board.

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In May, 1939, Gov. George A. Wilson appointed the former city manager to the board of control of state institutiions. This three man group is charged with the responsibility for the administration of 15 state institutions.

They are the state hospitals at Cherokee, Clarinda, Mount Pleasant and Independence, the Glenwood state school, the hospital and school at Woodward, the state tuberculosis sanatorium at Oakdale, the Iowa soldier's home at Marshalltown, the Iowa soldier's orphans' home at Davenport, the state juvenile home at Toledo, the training shcool for girls at Mitchellville, the training school for boys at Eldora, the women's reformatory at Rockwell City, the men's reformatory at Anamosa and the state penitentiary at Fort Madison.

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Mr. Hopkins' term on the board is one of six years. Already the group has made constructive, worthwhile gains and further improvements are in sight for the future. Characteristically, the lone democratic member of the board says that this fine work is that of the board as a whole.

So for the next four years at least P. F. Hopkins will serve Iowa in a vital position. It's too far away to see whether or not he will be reappointed to his present post or will be needed elsewhere. But it is not too far away to see that he will be a valuable man in not matter what position he holds.

Photograph courtesy of Globe-Gazette

Transcription and note by Sharon R. Becker, November of 2014

Cerro Gordo Biographies maintained by Lynn Diemer-Mathews.
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