People: Hopkins in Uniform

Up to her elbows in hospital work was Louise Macy Hopkins, Harry’s smart and pretty bride, who took an evening out to recruit nurses’ aids for the Red Cross with Recruit Joan Fontaine. Columned Eleanor Roosevelt enthusiastically: “[She] is such an ardent nurse’s aid worker . . . that she has more than 300 hours to her credit already and can do certain types of work which newcomers are not permitted to undertake.” At Columbia Hospital in Washington, Nurse’s Aid Louise Hopkins, from 9 to 4: makes beds, takes temperatures, feeds helpless patients, carries bedpans, fills water bottles and ice pitchers, runs errands, sits with postoperative cases, listens to beefs. After that she does chiefly paper work as captain of aids. The Hearst press last week reported the Hopkinses were still getting “fabulous” wedding presents from all over the world, described a few of the gaudier ones; fabulous Columnist Elsa Maxwell wrote: “The vulgarity of the detailed accounts of the jeweled wedding gifts . . . must have given even Harry’s sensitive tummy an extra turn. . . . and Louise Hopkins must have squirmed. . . .”