A SHORT HISTORY OF WOODY & WILLIE COOPER
Woody was born October 21, 1914 to Fanny Clementine Cooper, in Crawford, Tennessee, Overton County. Willie was born May 7, 1920 to James Anderson and Rosa Clementine (Poteet) Blaylock, at her parents’ home in Brotherton, Tennessee, Putnam, County. Woody died September 4, 2008 and Willie died May 23, 2010.
Willie (Blaylock) Cooper and Hosea Woodrow “Woody” Cooper remember with bell-like clarity the moment in August 1936 they first set eyes on each other. Willie was 16, and had walked her younger sibs, Comer and Gertrude, to the school bus in Homestead, TN, about four miles from Crossville. Woody was 22, and had just returned from spending nearly a year recuperating in Walter Reed Hospital from a broken hip after being run over by a chow truck 18 months years earlier in the Civilian Conversation Corp (CCC) camp operated by the Army near Henryville, TN where he had worked building roads over the Tennessee mountains,
Willie recalls seeing “the most handsome man come sauntering down the road.” And Woody still told everyone that, “She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I just knew I was going to marry that girl.”
And they did. On April 15, 1937, Woody and Willie were enjoying a traveling circus near their homes in Tennessee when they decided they didn’t want to wait any longer to get married. After failing to find local authorities to marry them, Woody hired a cab to take them to Albany, Kentucky, an 130 mile round trip that cost $10.
They had left Comer at the circus and when he didn’t find them later that night, Comer returned home without his big sister. Their family members were surprised and skeptical when they learned the news: “They said it’d never last,” the Coopers say with a laugh. But neither has looked back, and now 70 years later, Woody & Willie celebrate their wedding anniversary with family and friends, Sunday, April 15, 2007.
During their first few months of marriage, Woody & Willie lived in an apartment in Crossville, where Woody worked in a garage and a handle factory and Willie worked at the Taylor Hotel making beds. Woody also worked as a door-to-door salesman for Watkins Products in Sparta TN, 30 miles from Crossville. During those first few months, Woody also bought his first automobile, for $100.00.
In 1938, Woody moved to Dayton, OH to find work and a few weeks later, Willie joined him, now pregnant with their first son. Here they lived in a small apartment on Sears Street, where Willie worked for their landlady and Woody did construction work for a variety of companies, including National Plumber’s (at the Soldier’s Home), G.H.& R. Foundry, and Acme Company. He also worked for Shartzer Wrecking Company, where his job was to knock down buildings, salvage and clean the materials which were then sold. Willie later worked at Troy Pearl Dry Cleaners, pressing laundry.
James William Cooper was born on April 11, 1939, and Hosea Woodrow Cooper, Jr. on December 11, 1940, in St. Elizabeth hospital.
The Cooper’s moved again but upstairs apartment wouldn’t heat properly. Baby Woody was frequently in poor health, and they couldn’t find a different apartment that would accept children. In December 1941, Woody and Willie made the difficult decision to leave Jim and Woody in the care of Willie’s parents, James and Rosa, in Crossville. Driving back to Dayton, they picked up a hitchhiking soldier who was trying to get back to PA and he told them about the Pearl Harbor attack.
In 1942, August, Willie traveled by train to TN to bring Jim and Woody back to OH.
Willie soon was hired at Leland Electric and Woody worked at Delco. She was one of the WWII "Rosies" who worked in factories while the men were overseas fighting.
1943, winter: Woody tried to enlist in Navy. He passed his physical exam in Cincinnati and when the family was at the Union railroad station waiting for Woody to board the train to Great Lakes, MI, Jim & little Woody were so excited, they kept singing, “My daddy’s going to the Navy.” However, Woody failed his physical in Great Lake because of his hip and leg injuries from the CCC accident that left one leg shorter.
During 1944, Woody went to Arizona for work. He lived in Prescott for about four moths and worked in a service station. Woody tried to persuade Willlie to move to AZ where he had the opportunity to run a service station, but Willie did not want to move Jim and Woody and enjoyed her job at Leland Electric. Later that year, Woody shipped out to Panama, where he began working at Allbrook Field, where he stayed until WWII ended. Here Woody’s job was to install instrument panels in P38 fighter war planes while the planes were on the runways. He had to check the voltage to make sure the instrument panels were OK and often got jolted. Woody said that he always “worried until I knew it landed” safely.
Woody enjoyed Panama and working for the war effort, but he also became homesick for his family and for Tennessee. He wrote letters from Panama and he wanted Mom and the boys to move back to Crossville. So in September 1945, Willie quit her job at Leland Electric and moved back to TN. When Woody returned from Panama in November, they rented a Homestead house for about six months, which they bought November. Their Cumberland stone house on Pigeon Ridge Road had 59 acres, a spiral staircase, big front porch and cost $3300. Willie took a job at Gold Toe Hosiery, sewing seams in women‘s hosiery, and Woody worked at Tennessee Technical College, doing construction work.
The Cumberland Homestead Project (1934-1946) was part of President FDR’s New Deal designed to provide jobs to lift the country out of the devastation of the Great Depression. The project put many people back to work and the homes were built out of locally mined sandstone, called Crab Orchard stone for its soft color. Willie loved their farm and tells stories about hiking over the hollows to pick raspberries, but wearing high boots and carrying her father’s shotgun to protect herself from the rattlesnakes.
Frustrated about not finding a good-paying job, Woody returned to Dayton in March 1947. Willie and the boys stayed behind until June. While Woody was working in Dayton,
Homer’s (Woody’s older brother) son hit Jim in the face with a sickle. Jim had several stitches and his face was so bandaged, only his mouth, eyes and nose showed. Around the same time, Woody’s arm was broken when one of Homer’s son sat on his arm. And Willie was now pregnant with Brenda. Woody drove to Tennessee and told the local physician that he had to take his family back to OH to keep them safe.
The family lived off Ludlow Street for a month, then rented in one bedroom apartment on Franklin Street. 1947, October 3, their only daughter, Brenda Kay born. A few months later, they moved to duplex at102 Deeds Avenue, where they lived in 1957. Their youngest son, Robert Gary, was born July 24, 1949.
Not long about Bob’s birth, Woody begins a full-time maintenance job working at Duriron Foundry, where he worked until he retired in 1979. Woody and Willie bought their first home and moved to Meadowdale (4237 Lobata Place), a new subdivision, in February 1957. For their down payment, the Coopers and their four children painted the inside of their new home. Youngsters Brenda and Bob were assigned the closets, where their lack of painting skills would not be so obvious. Woody and Willie lived in Meadowdale until December1973 when they bought their current home in Kettering, Ohio.
Fast-forward to 2010
• Jim joined the Air Force in 1959 and married Ann Burton in December the same year. They moved to Colorado in the 1980s where they still live with their family. Jim and Ann have three children and four grandchildren: Kimberly (1962), and her children, Jesse (1996) and Sarah (2002); Ken (1964); and Laura (1968) and James Wilkes have two sons, Dilon (1993) and Cassidy (1995).
• Woody Jr. moved to Chicago in 1966, moved to FL in 1984, and died in 1995, in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Click here for obituary. He worked as a hospital administrator, a realtor, and did volunteer work for Hospice in Dade, County, FL. Preceded in death by his partner, David Jenkins, January 1992.
• Brenda and her husband, Ted Pease reside in Trinidad, CA and Petersboro, UT, where they at both professors at Utah State University. Brenda has three children: Tammy Sullivan (1964) and her husband John have two children, Holly (1990) and Sean (1992), and one grandson, Cameron (2009), and live in Ohio; Bryan Mullins (1968) lives in Ohio with his wife, Amber McCurdy and daughter, Rhia (1995) and are expecting a new baby in September. Denise Landrigan (1974) and her husband, Jay live in Ohio with their doggie son, Dexter. Please note: Tammy requests that no additional information about her be posted online.
• Bob moved to AZ in 1994 and died in Tombstone, AZ, September 7, 2009. Click here for obituary. Bob has four children and five grandchildren: Andy (1986) and Cheyenne (1991) and her daughter, Alexis Renay (2009) who live in Arizona; Michael (1968) and his partner, Dani Jackson, and their daughter Micayla-Anne reside in New Jersey, and Dominique (1972) lives in Hawaii, with children Jessyka (1996) & Davey (2005); her son Jaykob Sky (1994) lives in New York City with his grandmother, Joan Beane.
• Woody died September 4, 2008, at the age of 93. Click here for obituary.
• Willie died May 23, 2010,at the age of 90. Click here for obituary.
No comments:
Post a Comment