We stand on the shoulders of giants.
Ora Hopkins was born in Yell County, Arkansas, in November 1902, to Jim and Nancy Miller Hopkins, the 10th of 11 children.  She lost her dad before she turned 8. She was orphaned at 14, having lost her mother and two older brothers to the Spanish flu epidemic. Just before her 19th birthday, she married Odes Brunson.
Shortly thereafter, Odes and Ora, and five of Odes’s brothers, moved to river-bottom land along the Verdigris River in northeast Oklahoma, to farm. Over the next 25 years, Ora gave birth to ten children, nine of whom made it to adulthood, and one of whom was my dad. She and Odes spent most of those years as sharecroppers and migrant workers, spending time in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and California….