A memorial service for Gladys Jewell Cooper, 101, will be held later this year.
Mrs. Cooper died January 19, 2021, at home of complication from COVID-19. She was born on August 10, 1919, in a sawed-lumber house three miles west of Emory to William Dolan Montgomery and Myrtle Leona Garmon. She graduated from Quinlan High School in 1936. She married Dwain Cooper at the McClosky Army Hospital Chapel on May 5, 1945. After her husband’s death in 1967 due to complications from his war injuries, Mrs. Cooper worked as a bookkeeper for a local propane gas company. She retired a few decades later as the office manager for Potts Gas Company. She later worked a few days a week at the Rains County Public Library.
Mrs. Cooper’s passions throughout her life were for farm animals, flowers, friends, combative conversations and a deep and abiding love of others. She helped in the founding of the Rains Flower and Garden Club, the Rains County Public Library and the Women’s Exhibit of the Rains County Fair.
She served for many years in The March of Dimes, The Crippled Children’s Society, The American Heart Association, The Easter Seal Society, The Auxiliary of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and The Disabled American Veterans.
In her service to the Emory United Methodist Church, she was a Sunday school teacher, youth leader of the Methodist Youth Fellowship, the Women’s Society of Christian Service, the Sunshine Circle, the Quilting Circle, and under the leadership of Rev. Mike Proctor, was a founder of what is now the Rains County Good Samaritans.
Mrs. Cooper is survived by her son, Mickey Cooper and wife Cindy; grandchildren, Blake Cooper and wife Brittnay, Rachel Holcomb, and Cora Cooper Cox and husband Robert; and five great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her husband; and her parents.