- Date Of Birth: November 19, 1921
- Date Of Death: February 11, 2016
- State: Utah
Hope C. Bisbing
1921 – 2016
Born Nov 19, 1921 in Washington, D.C., to Samuel A. and Josephine Williams McMillan. She
was a member of the Biltmore Baptist Church in Asheville, N.C. where she grew up and
graduated from Biltmore High School.
She loved athletics of all kinds and played basketball, softball, volleyball and tennis. She was
selected for four straight years for the regional all-star basketball team. Her team won the
regional championship for three straight years and did not lose a game in those three years. In her
junior year she won the medal awarded to the best athlete in the school. It was the first time that
a girl had ever won this medal over all of the male contenders. After that, the school decided to
award two medals each year, one for the boys and one for the girls.
After graduating from high school, Hope continued playing softball at shortstop for a champion
commercial team, The Allsports Store. She also played basketball for two years on a semi-
professional team, “The Asheville Bomberettes”. They played the preliminary games for the
National Basketball Association. team, “The Asheville Bombers” who played against the Boston
Celtics, the Harlem Globe Trotters and other nationally known teams. While with the
Bomberettes, she was the only one on the team to be selected for an all-star team in a four-state
tournament.
In 1940 she married Marvin E. Carter. They had a son, John Gerald. They were later divorced.
She worked as an auditor for several years with the Postal Accounts Division of the General
Accounting Office in Asheville. Later she transferred to the National Weather Records Center
where she worked at program wiring and operating various business machines and early
computers. She studied two years of meteorology at the Asheville-Biltmore College during this
time. She was the only female member of the office bowling team which won the league
championship in 1957-1958.
In 1947 she was hired as a double for Susan Hayward in the film “Tap Roots” and for riding in
many cavalry charges during battle scenes dressed as a Confederate cavalryman. During this
filming she became friends with many famous movie stars such as Susan Hayward, Van Heflin,
Boris Karloff, Robert Mitchum, Ward Bond and others.
In 1961 she married Wes Bisbing and moved to Brigham City, Utah. They purchased a farm in
North Willard. Wes worked as an engineer for Thiokol Corp. and Hope worked on the farm and
raised alfalfa and horses. She experimented with cross breeding horses and would raise, break
and train them until they were four years or more old so she could see how they turned out.
