michael j hopkins
All About Me
As a lifelong resident of Wisconsin, Michael J. Hopkins graduated from Beloit College with a degree in economics while later earning a degree in history from Arizona State University and the University of Wisconsin–Platteville. He earned his master’s degree in the humanities from California State University (Dominguez Hills). After a forty-year career teaching high school social studies at Darlington High School (for all but one year), as well as coaching basketball, baseball, and football at Darlington High School for many years, he is retired. In 2021, he was inducted into the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Recently, he has embarked on a second career as an author. In 2025, he published his autobiographical memoirs as an athlete and coach, titled Embracing A Competitive Life: Trials, Triumphs, and 150 Life Lessons in Six Decades of Competition.
My HP Books
When Irish Parallel Lives Intersect is a historical fiction novel that follows four families, each featuring strong-willed women with roots in southern Ireland, who emigrated to the United States during the 1840s and 1850s to settle in various regions of the Midwest. Two of these families, the Powers and the Coughlins, had daughters who joined the Catholic Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, founded by Father Samuel Mazzuchelli in August 1847. One daughter from each family became the Mother General of the congregation, making a long-lasting impression. Ellen Power became Sister Emily, serving from 1867 to 1909, while Ellen Theresa Coughlin became Sister Samuel, leading from 1909 to 1949.
The Dominican Sisters set up over a hundred parish schools from 1867 to 1949, including some in Chicago, where they connected with the Cullen and Hynes families. Fiona, the daughter of Shane and Sarah Cullen, married David Hynes. The link between the Cullen and Hynes families and the Dominican Sisters was important enough that in 1919, they moved to Dixon, Illinois, to avoid rising racial tensions and gang violence in Chicago after World War I. Jack and Nelle Reagan moved to Dixon in December 1920, just two blocks away from the Hynes family home. The Hynes and Reagan families became closely connected socially, as Fiona Hynes and Nelle Reagan built a strong friendship based on mutual respect and shared interests.
The book looks at the Reagan family’s relationships, focusing on Jack Reagan’s difficulty in keeping a job and its effect on the family, how the oldest son Neil dealt with being overshadowed by his more popular brother, and how Nelle’s character and faith united them. It also recounts Ronald Reagan’s childhood, college years, and his work as a radio broadcaster and actor before he served in the military during World War II and became president of the Screen Actors Guild at the start of the Cold War, which began to shift his political views in the 1950s.
The book examines the family dynamics of the Cullens and Hyneses, especially the development of David and Fiona Hynes’s four children from childhood to early adulthood. Born between 1921 and 1929, the Hynes siblings—Patrick, Erin, Darby, and James—grew up during the Great Depression in Dixon and were raised in a religious setting influenced by the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa. Each member of the Cullen-Hynes family dealt with unique challenges in the 1940s and 1950s that tested their religious beliefs and impacted their career paths.
