Had (Hopalong Cassidy) guns, traveled (many miles since this Melville Street porch in Graham), now retired in Fountain
Grew up in Graham. Earned AB in journalism/English from UNC-CH, MFA from UNC-Greensboro. Worked in public relations (Rocky Mount) and retail books (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Gastonia, Athens, Ga.) before embarking on 38-year career as educator, in Louisiana and North Carolina.
Retired from public work, living in Fountain, with wife, Elizabeth, son Silas now off to Roxboro as sports editor at Courier-Times.
William Boyd had retired as Hopalong Cassidy when he became spokesperson for Producers Dairy in 1956. Photo courtesy of Producers Dairy.
Retirement days are full of finding forgotten things in boxes, and among other lost things, I’m still searching for the 8×10 photo of me (shot by a previously known Burlington Times News photographer) pulling those Hoppy guns on Hoppy himself, who’s mainly got eyes for Miss North Carolina in that moment captured just after the Burlington Christmas parade, 1956.
The Scott Family Collection, scottcollection.org
Hopalong Cassidy was a spokesperson for Melville Dairies (and others), for which my dad worked, in Burlington. We kids earned points towards our Hoppy gear by collecting the coin-like cardboard inserts that helped seal our glass bottles of milk, home-delivered, of course. We drank a lot of milk.
I’ve lost my guns (I had first a single shooter holster, then the double-guns one), hat, bullet belt and vest but still have a Hoppy bedspread that Elizabeth has for the most part restored and, somewhere, that 8×10.
Hoppy’s papers are the University of Wyoming; one box of the 241 in that collection is restricted until 2058.
