Ben W. Hooper

Family and legacy

Hooper married Anna Belle Jones in 1901. They had six children: Anna, Ben, James, Margaret, Lemuel and Newell. Hooper's grandson, Ben W. Hooper, II, is a former circuit court judge in the Fourth Judicial District of Tennessee, comprising Cocke, Sevier, Jefferson, and Grainger Counties.

Hooper's autobiography, The Unwanted Boy, was published posthumously in 1963. The Ben W. Hooper Vocational School, which opened in Newport in 1976, is named in his honor. The school is now part of Cocke County High School.

In the early 2000s, Hooper was the subject of a story entitled "Who's Your Daddy?", which circulated via email. The story, though considerably embellished, was based on incidents Hooper recalled in his autobiography.

Works "Labor, Railroads and the Public," American Bar Association Journal, vol. 9, no. 1 (Jan. 1923), pp. 15–18. In JSTOR.