Owen Cooper

[Texsox]

A friend of mine, Calvin, posted this elsewhere. Calvin has been a long time community leader and has been the Scoutmaster to thousands of kids and over a hundred Eagle Scouts.

 

Today (November 8th) is the 20th anniversary of the death of Owen Cooper,

a great man.

 

Mr. Cooper was a friend of my father and I remember my father talking

about his friend on many occasions, especially when it came to making

decisions dealing with how to treat other people.

 

In additional to being a corporate leader with principles we rarely see

among high level executives in today's corporate world, Owen Cooper was an

active Scouter and was a co-founder of the Association of Baptists for

Scouting. http://www.scouting.org/factsheets/02-647.html

 

Mr. Cooper was the second and last layman to serve as president of the

Southern Baptist Convention. During his two-year tenure from 1972 to

1974, he visited every state in the United States and every country where

Baptists had missions. Detailed information on Mr. Cooper is here:

 

http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/features/feature63/owen.htm

 

The portion below of his bio is especially impressive to me as I grew up

in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement.

______________________

 

During the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s,

Cooper's deep moral convictions led him to stand up and speak out for

tolerance and cooperation between blacks and whites. When James Meredith's

integration of the University of Mississippi on September 30, 1962, was

met by mob violence that left 375 injured and two dead, Cooper was one of

Mississippi's white civic leaders who issued a public statement abhorring

the violence and pleading with Mississippians to respect and obey the laws

of the land.

 

After thirty-five black churches were burned across Mississippi in 1964,

Cooper helped organize the Mississippi Religious Leadership Council that

spoke out boldly against the bombing and burning of churches and

synagogues. “The burning of those black churches left him livid,” his

longtime personal assistant Sue Tatum recalled. “It was one of the few

times I ever saw him enraged.”

 

Cooper was also one of the few white Mississippi leaders to advocate the

peaceful desegregation of Mississippi workplaces, public facilities,

colleges, and public schools. In 1966, Cooper took the unprecedented step

of partnering with NAACP State Chairman Aaron Henry to pull together black

and white leaders to form Mississippi Action for Progress and run the

largest Head Start program in the South to service disadvantaged

Mississippi preschoolers. He made the decision to become involved in the

biracial program knowing it would jeopardize his long-held, but private,

goal to someday run for governor of Mississippi.

______________________

 

 

During camping trips with our Scouts, I frequently use a booklet titled

"Baptist Trail Devotions" when helping with our Sunday morning religious

services. Below is a poem written by Owen Cooper and published in the

booklet. Notations indicate that I've read this to our Scouts at least

nine times during the past fifteen years. I know I've used it as my

Scoutmaster's minute during troop meetings too.

 

If I Had My Life To Live Over

by Owen Cooper

 

If I had my life to live over, I would love more.

I would especially love others more.

I would let this love express itself in a concern for my neighbors, my

friends, and with all whom I came in contact.

 

I would try to let love permeate me, overcome me, overwhelm me, and direct

me.

I would love the unlovely, the unwanted, the unknown, and the unloved.

 

I would give more. I would learn early in life the joy of giving, the

pleasure of sharing, and the happiness of helping.

 

I would learn to give more than money.

I would give some of life's treasured possessions, such as time, thoughts

and kind words.

 

If I had my life to live over I would be much more unconventional; because

where society overlooks people, I would socialize with them;

Where custom acknowledges peers as best with whom to have fellowship, I

would want some non-peer friends;

Where tradition stratifies people because of economics, education, race or

religion, I would want to fellowship with friends in all strata.

 

I would choose to go where the crowd doesn't go,

Where the road is not paved, where the weather is bitter;

Where friends are few, where the need is great,

And where God is most likely to be found.

 

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