Conflict & character
At 98 years old, Carl Cooper has seen a lot.
He experienced the Great Depression and has met his first great-great grandchild. He also served in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
“The good Lord has blessed me, and I appreciate it. He brought me back safe and sound,” Cooper said.
Cooper has lived in his Vestavia Hills home on Donna Drive since 1976, and he takes care of everything from cooking meals to tending the tomato and bean plants in his backyard. The walls of his home are covered in family pictures, certificates of appreciation, mementos and boughs of flowers over the archways between rooms, hung by his wife James Anna, or “Jimmie,” prior to her death in 2003. The organ she used to play still sits in the front room.
“Pretty much everything in the house is just the way my wife had it placed,” Cooper said.
He grew up on a farm in Clanton as the seventh of 10 siblings. Cooper said his father was a Baptist deacon and among the first to plant peach trees in Chilton County. Despite growing up during the Great Depression in the 1930s, Cooper said his family’s farm always kept them fed and clothed, though their entire home was destroyed once when a tornado passed through in 1932.
Cooper played on the football and basketball teams at Chilton County High School, and served as football team captain. He attended Howard College, now Samford University, and studied biology from 1940-41.
“I guess if the war hadn’t come on, I would have probably gone on into medicine or into pharmacy,” Cooper said. “Then the war came along, stopped everything, and I joined the Marine Corps.”
Instead of finishing his degree, Cooper enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1942 and went through Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Virginia. As a newly-minted second lieutenant, Cooper was sent to the Pacific theater of World War II and served at Guadalcanal and Okinawa.
“Okinawa, I think we had more casualties there than any other operation in the Pacific,” Cooper said.
The battle at Okinawa, which took place from April to June 1945, is considered one of the most intense of the war’s Pacific theater due to heavy fighting on land, sea and air, including kamikaze attacks by the Japanese pilots. The battle totaled 135,000-160,000 casualties on both sides of the conflict, as well as heavy civilian loss of life.
He had friends who did not make it out of that battle alive
“Anybody’s been in combat, you get out of it — you’re lucky,” Cooper said. “It just wasn’t my time to go.”
Cooper said after Okinawa, his unit moved to Guam to prepare for invasion of Japan, until the dropping of two atomic bombs and the Japanese surrender ended the war.
Returning home, Cooper completed his degree, chose to pursue a career in education and married Jimmie Cooper. They settled in Marion, where both taught and Carl Cooper coached. When Mountain Brook decided to create its own school system, Cooper was tapped to become its first junior high principal.
“The biggest thing to do is let them know you’re pulling for them instead of pulling against them,” Cooper said of his approach as principal. “They always called me the strict disciplinarian, and I was — I don’t make no bones about that.”
The Coopers had two children: their son, James Carl, and their daughter, Charlotte.
Carl Cooper was again called to active duty during the Korean War, serving in artillery and infantry, and during the Vietnam War, working mostly in training and recruiting in Washington, D.C. and California. His son also served in Vietnam.
Though Cooper mostly worked in administrative roles during the Vietnam War, he said he recalls the difference in terrain and the enemy they were fighting, compared to World War II. And regardless of the conflict, the soldier’s approach on the ground is much the same in every generation.
“You just do the best you can, go home at night and go to sleep,” he said.
Cooper’s son died young, after returning home from Vietnam, getting married and almost completing his degree.
“He had 17 hours, like 17 hours of having his degree. He liked motorcycles and unfortunately had a wreck and lost his life,” Cooper said.
His daughter also passed away in 2006. She was a mother of four, and Cooper now also has 16 great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.
After a 38-year military career that included work with many “fine people” and meeting several presidents, Cooper retired as a colonel in 1980 and began working in natural disaster response services, eventually working with FEMA to get everything they need set up on-site in the wake of a disaster.
Cooper’s career, including both his military service and FEMA work, earned him a resolution from the Alabama Legislature in March, which he traveled to Montgomery to accept.
Cooper has been fully retired since his wife’s passing. However, the 98-year-old remains immensely proud that he was able to serve his country not once, but three times.
He recalled that when the Gulf War started, he called the Marine Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., with an earnest question:
“‘How about me coming back on active duty?’ And they started laughing,” Cooper said. “They said, ‘Colonel, you’ve had your fun. Let some of the young folks have theirs.’”