Wednesday, July 3, 2024
In his 50 professional years, Tumbleweed has interviewed some true Texas characters and assembled the largest private collection of oral history in the United States. He writes a syndicated weekly newspaper column and teaches broadcasting at the university level.
When Alan Hopewell was marching in a parade with the Aggie Band playing his baritone sax, a drunken man stepped in front of him and stumbled around, trying to get in step with the band.
Alan considered the Aggie Band to be a secure unit. No one was supposed to just crash in, especially when it was in motion. “I took my baritone sax and hit him in the head with it,” says Alan. “He fell down and we just kept on marching.”
Dr. Alan Hopewell has a successful psychology clinic in Fort Worth. He is an educated man and has several degrees plus some post-doctoral studies. “One of my majors was in Spanish. I‘m fluent in German and Spanish, even given lectures in German in Germany. I can read French and Italian and when I was in high school in Dallas, because I wanted to go to medical school, I took Latin and was the national High School Latin Champion two years in a row.”
Dr. Hopewell had a distinguished 27-year Army career, some of it in the Reserves. At the end of Desert Storm in 1991, he had completed his military obligation. “After 9/11, even though I was retired, and older than most of the troops, I had one of my Aggie classmates pull some strings and he got me back on active duty.”
He had earned the rank of major and as a psychologist, he treated military personnel all over Iraq, especially those with brain injuries. “They gave me the Bronze Star for that. We were rocketed a lot and shot at a lot. Even though I was older, I lugged around four duffel bags full of medical supplies and equipment. I did some studies and discovered the oldest soldier who made the landing at Normandy on D-Day was Teddy Roosevelt Jr. I was older than he was when I went to Iraq.”
When Maj. Hopewell was stationed at Fort Hood, he was the officer in charge of the brain injury clinic. In early November 2009, one of the psychiatrists assigned to the clinic, Maj. Nadal Malik Hasan shot 14 soldiers and civilians to death (including an unborn child) and wounded 30 others. Dr. Hopewell says the reporters got it wrong.
“The news said that when Hasan started shooting, the military police showed up within about five minutes and subdued him. That’s just not true. They didn’t show up for 40 minutes. This guy roamed around the entire complex for 40 minutes shooting people and trying to break into buildings. Finally, a civilian female security guard shot him and knocked him down. They subdued him at that point. He wanted to kill me because I was his commanding officer. But by the time he got to my building, we had it secured and fortified, and he couldn’t get in. But he was pounding on the door.”
When the shooting started, somebody called the post’s emergency number. “It’s kind of funny that when someone answered the phone and asked what’s going on, the person making the called screamed out that someone was shooting up the post and we need help. The response came back: ‘we can’t help you because we’re in Iraq.’”
Dr. Hopewell identified Hasan and testified against him at the trial and helped put him on death row at Leavenworth.
