Beyond the Graves: Mr. Hopcroft Buys a Stone

On January 22, 1949, Leo John Hopcroft walked into Tri-State Monument Co. on East Texas St. to order a tombstone. Mr. Hopcroft informed the salesperson of the critical details including the name, birth date, and death date to be engraved. He then requested that the stone be taken to St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery and placed on a plot between Block 7 and Block 8 near the historic Calvary Monument. When he completed his order and left, the salesperson seemed mystified; upset even. Explaining his queasiness to his co-workers, he explained that his customer had ordered the stone for himself. Mr. Hopcroft had just predicted his death and five years later, it turns out he was only 11 hours short of that prediction.

Leo John Hopcroft was born in Michigan. And in what seems like an appropriate detail, his recorded birth year varies between 1866 (the date listed on his tombstone), 1887 (listed on his WWI draft registration), 1886 (listed on his WWII draft registration), and 1888 (listed on multiple census records). He married and had three children. The family lived in Michigan for most of Mr. Hopcroft’s life, but in his later years, he moved to Shreveport where he worked as a salesman for a Cincinnati based clothing company and was described as an ardent Catholic, attending services at what is now the Cathedral of St. John Berchmans.

In the years leading up to his death, Leo made other predictions. Mrs. Lida Bolt, the landlord of the College St. address where he lived until his death, told The Times after his death that Mr. Hopcroft had a dream about when his sister would die. In the autumn before his death, he took the long trip to Michigan to see her and she passed away the week after he returned to Shreveport. In another instance about a month before his death, Mr. Hopcroft lamented to Mrs. Bolt that his uncle Ed Welch was, “in very bad shape and probably wouldn’t last more than a day or two.” As reported by The Times from that same interview with Mrs. Bolt, a letter arrived two days later saying that his uncle Ed had indeed died.

As his health began to deteriorate starting in January of 1954, Mr. Hopcroft had trouble getting around on his own but insisted that he would complete the nine-day novena of St. Francis which opened on March 15th of that year. On the last day of the novena, he told Mrs. Bolt that he was, “ready to go.”

A week and a half later, on the afternoon of March 24th, Leo John Hopcroft laid down to nap and died of natural causes, just eleven hours shy of his predicted time-of-death. In what now may be called “Hopcroftian” fashion, Leo had arranged his funeral some years earlier down to the brown suit he would wear at his service which was performed by Rev. Bernard Kearns, S. J. at St. John’s.

The death date on Mr. Hopcroft’s stone remains uncorrected.