Wanda Hoppock

Wanda Charlene Hoppock (Phillips) was born on December 6, 1932 to Roy and Bonnie Phillips in Osage, Arkansas and went to be with Jesus on March 18, 2025 at 92 years of age after a multi-year struggle with dementia. She grew up in the hills of Northwest Arkansas near the community of Rudd. Her childhood was spent working in the fields of the family farm and yet she found a more natural place caring for her younger brothers George and Harold. She became a mother in 1964 after marrying Charles Hoppock in Wichita, Kansas where they both worked at Beechcraft. Four years later she had a daughter Karen and “retired” from working the factory to become a full-time mother of Kevin and Karen as well as providing day care for other young children that she treated like her own. For thirty years she dedicated herself to loving on and raising children. The several dozen children cared for in her home were deeply formed by her love in their early years of life. She joined with her husband Charles in restoring houses that they then provided for rent as a separate means of income for the family. Still her primary work and passion was loving those near her and forming the young lives around her. This was most evident in her children, those in her day-care, but also was felt by any child in her vicinity. This was especially true for her 6 grandchildren who each believed that they were princes and princesses enriched by the queen of love herself. She also took great joy even to the end in holding, loving and caring for her 8 great grandchildren. Her gifts as a lover of children was recognized with the opening of the Grandma Wanda’s House of Hope, an orphan home in Northwest Haiti. Although she will never be remembered as one who wrote books, cured diseases or built businesses, she will always be remembered by her extraordinarily effective way of infusing a sacred love into the lives of the children God placed in her life. Those children and all of us have been deeply impacted by the love for a lifetime. She was preceded in death by her husband Charles, her parents Roy and Bonnie Phillips and her bothers Harold and Ermel Phillips and is survived by her brother George, her children Kevin(Melissa) Hoppock and Karen(Tate)Smith, her grandchildren Taylor (Lauren) Hoppock, Jennifer (John) Frankenfield, Catherine (Jared) Harvey, Blake Smith, Devin Smith and Ryan Smith, along with 8 great grandchildren and dozens upon dozens of children big and small who flourished under the love of Grandma Wanda.