Donna Hopkins, an English teacher, journalist and anthropologist, met James and his mother, Serena, in 1979, when she moved to Whitefish to live with her paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Luding Hopkins.  Donna was a dean at Flathead Valley Community College until 1986. She retired from the U. S. Small Business Administration in 2005 and now resides in her grandparents’ homestead in Whitefish.