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'Pioneer Lady' shared culinary insights Cookbook author Jane Hopping dies after long illness By JONEL ALECCIA Jane Watson Hopping, the calico-clad cookbook author known as "the Pioneer Lady" to Rogue Valley schoolchildren and readers nationwide, has died. She was 69. Hopping died Saturday in a local nursing home following complications of diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. A diabetic for 30 years, she had been seriously ill since about 1993, her husband, Raymond Hopping, said Sunday. Service plans are pending. Until about two months ago, Hopping was still living in the couple's Gold Hill home, where she and her husband were compiling notes for a cookbook about the Depression era. It would have been Hopping's eighth book. A tiny woman who sported gray curls, calico dresses and a ready smile, Hopping gained national attention in 1987, with publication of "The Pioneer Lady's Country Kitchen." The homey tome of recipes and nostalgic essays propelled her onto reader's favorites lists and TV talk shows. "I will miss her sense of humor," said Al Reiss, a former Mail Tribune entertainment writer and Hopping's longtime friend. "She did `Good Morning America' and `Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.' She upstaged Regis on his own show." The message in Hopping's first book and the five published works that followed was always the same. Her collections recalled an era of close kin and helpful neighbors, where collaboration was the rule, not the exception. She said the cookbooks grew out of a desire to share old-fashioned values. "I'm writing about what I saw as a young girl growing up," Hopping insisted when interviewers questioned her rosy nostaglia. "It really was that way." Hopping was born in Kansas and lived most of her young life in Missouri, according to her husband of nearly 49 years. "From the time she was 1 year old until we got married when we were 19, we never lived more than 25 miles apart from each other,'' he said. As adults, the Hoppings moved to Northern California, and then to the Rogue Valley in 1959. Jane Hopping earned a real estate license, but after the couple adopted two children, Colleen and Randy, she stayed home to raise them. The Hoppings lived and worked for more than four decades on a 40-acre farm off West Griffin Creek Road in Jacksonville. When her children got older, Hopping began touring area schools, teaching pioneer skills and crafts. "They churned butter in class, they made candles in class, they made log cabins out of pretzels," Raymond Hopping recalled. "They said the week we came, attendance went up. You can't have a better compliment than that." In the mid-1970s, Hopping began work on a compendium of farm knowledge, a project that eventually filled 1,000 single-spaced typed pages. She was the popular star for five years of a cooking show on Medford television station KOBI. In 1987, Con Sellers, the late literary agent and teacher, recommended Hopping to a publisher seeking a cookbook writer. The was the start of a long and profitable relationship with Villard Books. Hopping's books ranged the seasons and included volumes focusing on Christmas, Mother's Day, summer, autumn and winter, as in her last work, "The Pioneer Lady's Hearty Winter Cookbook." Reiss, who wrote several poems that appeared in Hopping's books, said he'll remember their warm collaboration. "I'll miss working with her and seeing them and going to their home and just having an old-fashioned lunch," Reiss said. All of Hopping's published books are out of print, but Raymond Hopping said he hopes to pursue softcover publication of the works his wife cherished. Besides, he adds, Hopping's agent has fielded a few inquiries about a completed but unpublished book, "The Good Old Golden Rules Day Cookbook." "Maybe that book will be the one to start it all again," he said. "She wouldn't be the first author that was recognized after she was gone." In addition to her husband, Hopping is survived by a daughter, Colleen Maddox of Ashland, a son, Randy Hopping of Pasco, Wash., and a granddaughter. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA