Obituary of Gloria Zitterkopf Hooper

Gloria Zitterkopf Hooper, a Walla Walla native, WaHi graduate, and long-time Professor of English at the University of Hawaii, died on March 2, 2021, in Lacey, Washington, where she and her husband have lived in retirement for the past several years. She is survived by her husband, Paul, also a native of Walla Walla and a retired University of Hawaii faculty member; her son, Anthony, and daughter-in-law, Cycelia; and her three much-loved grandchildren, Charlotte, Sarah, and Joshua, all of Hawaii; as well as her brother, Fred of Spokane; and sister, Marilyn of Fresno.  Her parents, Carl and Charlotte Zitterkopf, and brother, Bob, predeceased her. 

 

Her death was sudden and unanticipated. She was stricken by blood poisoning late in the last week of February and, despite the best efforts of local medical staff members, died at noon the following Tuesday.  Due to COVID crowd restrictions, no services are planned at this time.  

 

Gloria was widely recognized as an outstanding teacher and administrator, attributes the University acknowledged when it selected her for its outstanding faculty member award a decade or so ago. The particular skills that led to this award were her ability to work successfully with college drop-outs and non-native speakers, and her long record of calming frequently disputatious departmental faculties.

 

Life in Hawaii for Gloria went well beyond her classroom duties. Like most college faculty members, she was active in the professional organizations associated with her field, attending their numerous conferences and presenting a variety of research papers. The most exciting of these trips, although not to a true conference meeting, came during the 1983-84 academic year when Paul was selected as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Beijing’s Foreign Studies Institut, and she was invited to serve in the school’s English department. This created the opportunity, not only to become acquainted with both numerous Chinese leaders and students, but also to visit a number of East Asia countries during breaks in the academic calendar. When this appointment ended in mid-summer 1985, Bob and Anthony flew to China and then all four took the fabled Trans-Siberian train across Russia, glimpsed the rural Russian countryside where her parents were born and raised before emigrating to the U.S., visited Europe, and went on around the world to Walla Walla and then Honolulu.

 

If conditions permit, there will be a graveside service later during the summer at the family plot in Walla Walla’s Mountain View Cemetery. 

 

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