Brigham Young University President Rex E. Lee will award Presidential Citations to a California couple during the 115th commencement activities Aug. 16 at 4:30 p.m. in the Marriott Center.
Receiving awards will be Lorenzo N. and Stella Sorensen Hoopes of Oakland, Calif. They will join other recipients who have been honored since the award's inception in 1983. The citation recognizes outstanding individuals and groups, and the -Hoopeses will be acknowledged for their civic, professional and religious accomplishments.Lorenzo Hoopes, president of the consulting firm of Anthony Craig and Associates, has a distinguished career that spans half a century.
He attended Weber State College and the University of Utah. He also attended the Harvard University Advanced Management Program and earned his MBA degree from Pepperdine University in 1976.
He began a career with Safeway Stores Inc. in 1941 and moved through the company to become senior vice president and director. He retired in 1979 to accept an assignment with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as president of the England Bristol Mission.
He accepted an assignment in 1983 to be a counselor in the presidency of the Oakland Temple, and was called as temple president in 1985.
Among the highlights in his professional life were his appointment in 1953 as executive assistant to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson and his work with retail food stores throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, West Germany, Australia and Saudi Arabia. He was instrumental in negotiating agreements to introduce retail grocery stores operated by Safeway Stores to Saudi Arabia in 1979.
Hoopes has served on many boards, including serving as director of the Board of Education for the Oakland Unified School District; chairman and board member of the Foundation for American Agriculture; vice chairman and member of the Farm Foundation; president and member of the Coordinating Council for Higher Education in California; and chairman, director and secretary of the National Dairy Council.
Stella Sorensen Hoopes attended high school and business college in Salt Lake City. Before her marriage she worked as head of the comptometer department at the Utah Poultry Producers Association.
After her marriage in the Mesa Arizona Temple April 9, 1938, she became the mother of two children: David Craig Hoopes and the late Janet Hoopes Washburn.
She has been active in the LDS Church throughout her life, serving in many teaching and leadership positions, including president, counselor and teacher in ward Relief Society and mutual organizations. She received the Golden Gleaner Award, and assisted her husband in the England Bristol Mission from 1979-82. She has been a volunteer and an ordinance worker in the Oakland Temple since its dedication in 1965, and has been matron of that temple since 1985.
In addition, she is active in civic and literary groups in the Oakland area.