I lived in the city of Columbia during my first six years, spending each summer (until I was twelve years old) on my grandfather's farm in Burkes Garden, Virginia. Following the death of my mother in 1912, we moved to Eau Claire where my father built a home for the Ohl family (my mother's sister) -- five in all -- and for the four of us and for my grandmother, Olivia S. Bruegel. That is the reason for the size of the house, which was used from the attic to the basement, then and many years afterward.

I entered the first grade in Hyatt Park School, then located in a residence-type building on Park Street, across from Hyatt Park. From the second grade through the tenth, I attended school in the then new brick Hyatt Park Building on Main Street, across from the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. From the tenth grade, without a high school diploma, I went to college. After two years at Summerland College and two at the University of South Carolina, I graduated from the University of SC with an A.B. degree. Further formal education through the years included several sessions of Summer School at the University of South Carolina; auditing courses at Union Theological Seminary, New York; courses at Kennedy School of Missions, Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut; and the College of Chinese Studies in Peking, China.

Informal education included some travel: In 1930, in lieu of doing graduate work, my sister and I chose to use money left for our education by my mother's brother to take advantage of a remarkable tour of, or touching upon (in two cases), seven countries of Europe. We included in this trip the rare privilege to us of visiting our mother's and grandfather's relatives in Stuttgart, Mund and Munich, Germany. We saw our Grandfather's old home section of Wurtemberg. In more recent years, not including travel to and from the Mission Field, it has been my privilege to travel by car across the United States and back; to Eastern, Central, and Western Canals at different times; and through the major portion of Mexico.

When I was about nine years old, my father married Neta Jane Umberger Greever, a cousin and not a total stranger, and the Wesley Ohl family and my grandmother moved back to the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, area, where Raymond and Paul Ohl still live. The others are deceased.

The Superintendent of the City Schools in Rock Hill, South Carolina, had the policy of trying to employ teachers of the different denominations in Rock Hill as far as possible, and expected his teachers to participate in church and community affairs. Since Lutheran teachers were needed, the Pastor's Wife at Grace Lutheran Church, Rock Hill, Mrs. Henry Schroeder, wrote to me during my senior year at the University of South Carolina and asked me to apply. This I did and was given positions in the city schools for a period of ten years when I resigned. During this time, at the church I worked in the Ladies Bible Class, the Women's Missionary Society, and, for a number of years, was teacher of the Winthrop College Girls Class. I participated in religious surveys of the city and was a member of the city-wide choir that presented at Easter and Christmas THE MESSIAH, under the direction of Dr. Roberts of Winthrop Music Department. Often guest soloists from New York were invited.

As a young person, I was very active in the local Luther League and then on the state level several times: I served as Chairman of the Program Committee, as Life Service Secretary, and then as State President for two terms while in Rock Hill.

On December 30, 1936, Luther Grady Cooper and I were married in the Lutheran Church of the Ascension, Columbia, South Carolina.

The last of July the following summer, we sailed from New York for the United Lutheran Mission Field in China. We chose the Eastern route because Mr. Cooper had been across the Pacific several times before. After visiting Italy, Egypt, and the Holy Land, we proceeded to our Mission Field in India. In the Indian Ocean, we received orders from the Board of Foreign Missions through our Indian Mission to "land all baggage and remain in India until conditions cleared in China". (From some points of view, we might have been there yet! Conditions in China have a way of NOT clearing!)

Because of the Japanese invasion of Shanghai and Shantung Province, our section of North China, we could not proceed. Our planned two week visit in the India Mission lasted for about seven months. By that time, our first daughter, Kathryn Anne Cooper, had been born in Kugler Hospital, Guntur, Madras Presidency, South India, January 17, 1938. We entered Shantung Province officially under Japanese occupation, in the spring of 1938, though Chinese guerrillas were in control in the rural area.

On September 21, 1939, our second child, a son, John Walton Cooper, was born in Faberkrankenhaus, the German Hospital in Tsingtao, Shantung, China.

In the fall of 1940, because of the threat of War between the United States and Japan, the United States Government urged that women and children, the elderly, sick, and workers whose furloughs were due -- anyone not directly employed or whose services were not absolutely essential at that time -- to evacuate to be out of the way in case an acute emergency should occur and total evacuation should become necessary. For this purpose, three large passenger vessels were sent out. Because I was the wife of the President of the Lutheran Mission at that time, it was deemed expedient that I lead the way back to the United States for other mothers and young children. Our two children were under three years of age. Our ship, THE WASHINGTON, which exited from Shanghai, was crowded with women and children and a few men, all of whom travelled Tourist III. At Manilla in the Philippines, our ship picked up the families of the United States Military and Naval Personnel. They occupied First Class accomodations vacated by U.S. Airmen who had come out on THE WASHINGTON to be stationed in the Philippines.

Conditions became more tense in the Orient, and about a year later, "Pearl Harbor" resulted. Mr. Cooper was taken prisoner without knowing what had happened and all communications between us was cut off. By that time, the children and I had just moved to a little yellow brick bungelow at 820 Wildwood Avenue in Eau Claire, Columbia, South Carolina. Here we lived until Mr. Cooper was repatriated on the neutral exchange ship THE GRIPSHOLM (first exchange), did deputation work for the Board of Foreign Missions, and then went to Hartford, Connecticut, for courses at Kennedy School of Missions. Here I got my third "MA" degree at Commencement in the form of little Virginia Roberta Cooper.

After a year at Hartford, the family was then moved to Ventnor, New Jersey, to the missionary "Furlough Cottages". This was our base of operation while Mr. Cooper spent the fall, winter and spring doing deputation work in the Northern States for the Board of Foreign Missions.

Again we moved to the little yellow brick bungelow on Wildwood Avenue in Eau Claire, Columbia, South Carolina. Mr. Cooper continued to do deputation work until he left again for the Mission Field in China (after the war), when only 50 MEN from the United States were allowed to enter that country. Later, because the family could not get medical clearance to return to China, Mr. Cooper came back to the United States.

Mr. Cooper served pastorates at Little Mountain (five years) and Elloree (four years), South Carolina, before he was called to the Department of Religion at Newberry College. My time was more than filled with the duties of a wife and mother and the privileges of service as a pastor's wife. I did a little substitute teaching in the public schools. We have lived in Newberry for twenty-three years (in 1981). I thank God for having been near enough to serve my parents in their declining years.

Both of our girls married ministers. They are Kathryn Cooper Link (Mrs. William H. Link) of Richfield, North Carolina, and Roberta Cooper Schott (Mrs. G. Frederick Schott,III) of Princeton Junction, New Jersey. John Walton Cooper, our son, is an architect in Gastonia, North Carolina. They all attended Ascension Lutheran Church in Columbia, SC, as children. We have seven grandchildren.

My husband has retired from Newberry College as Professor Emeritus, but seems more busy than ever, especially with RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteer Program). I have decided there is no real retirement for the wife, except in rare cases! I no longer do substitute teaching in the public schools, as I did in Little Mountain, Elloree, and (for a while) in Newberry, but I am still active in the work of the church, the Newberry Civic League, the Garden Study Club, the Newberry Historical Society, the Newberry College Faculty Women's Club, and the RSVP. At present I regularly visit shut-ins and am now helping to teach English to some Vietnamese refugees sponsored by a Lutheran Church in this area. More than appears on the surface, we have much in common: I know how it is to be a foreigner in a strange land.

Truly my family and I have been richly blessed!