Meet the 9 siblings rowing for their father at this year’s Head of the Charles Regatta

“We're doing this in memory of dad.”

“There is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats,” wrote Kenneth Grahame in his classic novel “The Wind in the Willows.”

This could not be more true for the Hopkins family, whose nine red-headed siblings will be competing as one team at the Head of the Charles Regatta on Saturday. After their father passed away in 2022 from Glioblastoma Multiformae, a type of brain cancer, the siblings decided to row in honor of him and to raise money and awareness for GBM research.

Matt Hopkins, their father, happened to join his college’s rowing team while looking for something fun to do with his time. From there, he was hooked, and the sport grew into an indelible piece of him and his family for life.

“Rowing has been ingrained in Hopkins for forever,” said Ben Hopkins, a teacher and athletic director at Augustine Classical Academy in Saratoga County — and one of Matt’s sons. This is more evident than ever in the way both Ben and his mother, Tamra, spoke of the same quote from “The Wind in the Willows.”

Matt saw that rowing was not just about learning how to move a boat, said Tamra, but also how it can help people develop confidence in themselves and the ability to work as part of a team.

Meet the crew

With fiery hair and a common cause, here are the siblings:

• Maddie, 28
• Emma, 26
• Ben, 24
• Lucy, 22
• Abi, 20
• LilyAnna, 18
• Asher, 16
• Thomas, 14
• James, 11

The team is made of eight rowers and one coxswain. The youngest, James, will be the leader of the boat and will direct his older siblings to the finish line.

“It’s cool to see James have that confidence and the ability to navigate what’s a pretty difficult thing — it’s a 60 foot long boat,” said Ben, who is his coach in a normal setting.

“He inspired a love of the sport in each of them,” said Tamra. After their father passed away, some of the children had to take a break and reevaluate: “Do I love rowing, or do I just love being coached by my dad?” But they all felt a pull back to the water, so when the opportunity for them to row an eight together arose, “it just felt like such a gift.”

Each sibling had pursued rowing on their own separate avenues and on different teams at different stages of life, said Ben, which makes this opportunity all the more special.

“He made it really easy for us to love rowing,” said Maddie about her father. “We all chose to do it, very much so.”

Head of the Charles Regatta

The regatta is a deeply ingrained yearly tradition for the family — Maddie, who was born in early October, attended her first Head of the Charles when she was around two weeks old.

“He loved Head of the Charles so much that this was kind of like the perfect opportunity to honor him,” said Maddie.

Every year, Matt would drive up a trailer and Tamra would follow right behind in a minivan. After pulling off their exit, there would always be a man selling roses on the road, and every year, Matt would buy some for Tamra. He’d send them back to the minivan, said Maddie, and the seller would “knock on her window and be like, ‘The guy in the big red truck with all the boats wants you to have this.’”

“The fabric of our family life was that, of course we’re going to Head of the Charles,” she said. “And we did it in such a way that it wasn’t all about rowing.”

Those roses would sit on the minivan’s dashboard year round, until Matt bought new ones the next October.

The family has made countless memories at Head of the Charles, from finding the perfect bridges with the best visibility to following behind their dad on bikes, riding down the shoreline as he charged through the crowds to get a better view.

Other families have different holiday traditions or times of the year that they gather, said Tamra, and the Head of the Charles became this for the Hopkins. Even when some of the kids had gone off to college, they attended together every year, and the photos taken on the banks of the river would often go in their Christmas cards.

Rowing for a cause

“This was honestly a dream of dad’s for a while — he would joke about it,” Maddie chuckled and recounted how Matt would often say that there’s enough of them to row an eight.

Ben, who was a junior in college when Matt was diagnosed, always remembers his dad as a builder, both of physical things like boats and houses, but also of community.

Matt and Tamra helped found Augustine around 15 years ago, where Tamra now serves as the academic dean. Lucy and Ben also teach there, and the youngest three siblings attend the school.

“We are doing this for fun. We’re doing this in memory of dad,” Ben said, who raced in the HOCR in high school and college, when training was a lot more serious. “We’re not going to give up, but we’re not out here to collect a gold medal. That’s not the goal.”

Maddie wrote “Pulling For A Cure” to give people who only knew her father after his diagnosis a picture of what he was truly like, and described the experience as “cathartic.” She had many more years with him pre-GBM than post, but James was nine at the time, so Matt was sick during some of his more formative years. She feels fortunate to have been able to spend a lot of time with him, Maddie said.

The most difficult part of GBM is that it affects the brain, Tamra said, and for Matt, it looked like he was alright for the most part.

“You think that that person that you love is still there, but he would say things, he would do things that were so out of character,” Tamra said. “So you lose your friend or husband or father way before it appears that you’re losing them.”

The siblings were already close before Matt’s illness, said Ben, but going through those hardships together brought a lot of new respect and understanding.

Those that want to show support for GBM research can wear gray and can gather on Weeks Footbridge or Charles Eliot Bridge. The siblings won’t be there, but it’ll be a way to meet others who are going through similar experiences.

As the siblings get into the boat, they remember their father and the memories he left them with, of how to have fun with each other.

“He built schools, he built rowing teams,” said Ben, “and he built the nine of us.”