Hooper, Walter.

Walter Hooper was born in Reidsville, N.C., in 1931 and attended the University of North Carolina, graduating in 1954. He served in the U.S. Army for two years and reentered the university as a graduate student in education in 1957. He received a master's degree in education in 1958, and, for a time, taught school in Chapel Hill and at Christ School, Asheville, N.C.

Hooper was an instructor of English at the University of Kentucky in 1963, when he went to England and met C. S. Lewis. They became friends in the summer of 1963. After Lewis died on 22 November 1963, Hooper devoted himself to perpetuating the memory of C. S. Lewis and his work.

Hooper, who was ordained into the Anglican priesthood while residing in England, served as chaplain of two Oxford Colleges, Jesus and Wadham, and as an assistant rector of the church of St. Mary Magdalene in Oxford. Hooper became a member of the Roman Catholic Church in 1988, and he is now a Roman Catholic layman.

From the guide to the Walter Hooper Papers, circa 1940-1980, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)