Julius was my father, Stephen H. Hopkins’ uncle, making him my great uncle. From 1954 to 1965, he was the principal and teacher at the small native school in the Native Alaskan Village—Kotzebue—on the west coast of Alaska as well as in Savoonga on St. Lawarence Island. He was born on March 21, 1917 in Arkansas to Julius Wellington Cromwell Harkey and Nettie Lou Mathews. He married my great aunt, Opal Fowler, in 1942 at Fort Towson, Choctaw, Oklahoma. Opal was the third great-granddaughter of Choctaw Chief Thomas LeFlore, who led his tribe on the Trail of Tears from Florida to Oklahoma.

Opal lived in Kotzebue with Julius until his death of a heart attack in 1965. Opal had sent my father a telegram letting him know of his death and would he please come help her fly him home to be buried at Garvin, McCurtain County, Oklahoma. He was only 48 years old. They never had any children and to my knowledge Aunt Opal never married again. At one time I had that telegram, but I misplaced it at the time of this publication.

Around 1991, after Opal’s death in 1990, she had a lot of Julius’ things sent to my father when he was living in Lewiston, Idaho. There were pictures, thousands of slides, eight-millimeter films Julius took, and about a dozen or so manuscripts written by him. I have most of the slides from those pictures I’m having converted to CD. When I publish this as an eBook and in print, some the photos he took will be put in that book. Fascinating to see the Eskimo’s way of life during that time from his point of view—a white man of German descent looking in.

There were about six foil boxes full of slides, also. Those eight-millimeter films and those foil boxes I had donated to the University of Alaska in Fairbanks when I was living in Sitka, Alaska; and that collection can be seen on their website. I kept the manuscripts to put them in book form, so what you are reading are those he wrote. Ninety-nine percent of his writing is his own. I only edited where I thought there might be some misunderstanding or where I couldn’t read his handwriting from his own edits, or words he used I had never seen or heard before and had to look up to make sure the use and spelling were correct; I may have missed some. Please keep in mind these stories, musings, and observations were his own and written before 1964!

I had heard he tried to get a lot of his manuscripts published, I believe as short stories, but they never came to fruition, except possibly one but I’ve found no evidence it was. So, what you are reading are his stories. I hope you find enjoyment in reading them as I have. Though he lived in Kotzebue, some of his writings are about other small Alaskan villages throughout the west coast of Alaska, including a story titled, ‘The Ragged Rim of Yesterday’, about a village on the island of St. Lawrence not far from the Russian border.