Just call him “Scoutmaster,” and thousands of African-Americans in Cincinnati who belonged to Boy Scout Troop 55 will remember Leo J. Hopkins.

        He was the first African-American in Cincinnati to have a Scout district named in his honor, in 1971.

        Mr. Hopkins will be honored at a noon luncheon on Sept. 22 at the Upper Room, a Christian Bar, part of Jim Curry Enterprises, 1018 William Howard Taft Road in Walnut Hills.

        It is to be a gathering of many of the members of Troop 55, which was the centerpiece of Mr. Hopkins' life. The troop was sponsored by the Ninth Street Branch YMCA and included mostly African American boys.

        Herman Turner, 55, a retired school teacher and former troop member, described Mr. Hopkins' image as “more than just human. It was more like a pope or a god.”

        Mr. Hopkins became scoutmaster of Troop 55 in 1929. His troop became active in the community, ushering at YMCA programs, participating in a wreath ceremony for Lincoln's birthday, working as waiters for banquets, guides at the YMCA camp in Milford and guards at a Clarence Darrow lecture.

        During World War II, Mr. Hopkins and his scouts provided a drum and bugle corps, a bicycle brigade and a drill team for parades in Cincinnati. They collected tons of scrap iron for the war effort and conducted paper drives.

        “He was a man of short stature but huge impact,” said Lynwood Battle Jr., a retired Procter & Gamble executive and former Troop 55 member. “He didn't have a family, so he became sort of a collector of kids through scouting.”

        Troop members described him as about 4-feet-11, weighing about 100 pounds, thin and muscular.

        Records show that he was born in 1902 and orphaned soon after. He lived at the Ninth Street YMCA until it closed in the early 1960s.

        Lynwood Battle Sr., a former assistant scoutmaster under Mr. Hopkins and an owner of Battle Funeral Home in Avondale, built an apartment for Mr. Hopkins near his funeral home and cared for him until his death in 1968.

        .”

        In 1971,two scout districts merged, and a move was started to name the new district after Mr. Hopkins.

        “The emphasis then was to name a district after someone who had devoted a lifetime of actually working with boys, not because of a prominent name or someone who had made a financial contribution to scouting,” said Hasker Nelson, an assistant district executive at the time. Mr. Nelson led the move to get the district named after Mr. Hopkins on July 1, 1971.

        The district includes Lower Price Hill, West End, Downtown, Mount Auburn, Avondale, Walnut Hills, Evanston, St. Bernard, Norwood, Corryville and parts of Clifton.

        For more information on the noon luncheon, call 961-3250.

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