Cooper’s love affair with the English language led her to write even as a child. At the age of ten, she wrote a play about Peter Cottontail that was performed for the entire school of Miller Park Elementary in Hall County, Georgia, where she attended. Later, during her childbearing years, which produced three sons, she worked as an upper-level administrative assistant -and scribbled poems and stories on the side.

Long years and many miles later, she married Alan Ross at their Nashville cottage in Nashville called Golden Acre. “It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day,” she says, eyes soft with remembrance. “I wore a short white dress and we were married in the front yard. I whispered my vows, Alan sang his!”

Ross, a singer/songwriter and a session vocalist of 35-year standing in the Nashville music arena, spent months composing his vows in song and sang them a cappella at the wedding. Since that time he has been besieged with requests to perform the song at the weddings of friends and friends’ children. He is no stranger to that, his career in music started over 30 years ago when he sang with his first wife, Pam Meacham.

Asked if, as his current wife, she sings with him too, Cooper snorts, “Ha! The first note I sang would empty stadiums and auditoriums in record time. There would be stampedes to get away, people would be injured.” Rather than “hinder him” by singing along, she believes she best serves by being anonymous, a sort of background person. She designs his CD covers and shoots his PR shots, explaining, “It’s a great way to get publicity for my work.” With a laugh she continues, “And I enjoy it. I’ve done other CD covers, and the ones with photos are great. The others are pitiful.” Her photography skills were learned at Nashville State Technical School where she majored in photography and design. There she also doubled up on English classes and tutored English composition. Her GPA was 3.9.

“I credit a lot of my knowledge about composing a written piece properly to Cheryl Lane, a teacher at NSTI who encouraged me as a writer. No matter how I perfected an essay for class, she could always find some teeny tiny error! AND, she was a stickler for outlines, and now I am too.”

Her crossover from photography student to professional writer was a magical event that she loves to recount. “By that time my husband was writing on assignment for Walnut Grove Press, and he had been asked to write a book about romantic love. Over the years I’ve acted as his primary researcher on everything except his sports articles, so I started researching the love book too. The material was so sweet, and as I read things to Alan, we began to collaborate more and more on the book. We read poems and passages to each other and shared a really good time putting that book together. It strengthened our marriage. I’m convinced that the book is imbued with special romantic powers because of the spell we were under while we wrote it.”

The love book, Love Is Forever, has done well in sales. Cooper and Ross did a book signing at Barnes & Noble on Valentine’s Day 1999 to promote it, then both quickly moved on to their next projects.

For Cooper, that meant editing a book for a brand-new author, typesetting three books for Walnut Grove, and researching for Ross’s next book. Along with that she did research for a Ph.D. candidate on possible genetic changes that could be the result of childhood sexual abuse - and was able to substantiate the premise of the dissertation. In addition, she produced several more books for Walnut Grove, two of which are now in print: Mothers and Daughters Forever, and A Baby Is….

In the world of publishing, being a published author opens doors. One of the most important doors in Cooper’s life opened up for her about that time: she made the acquaintance of Jeannette Harris, publisher for the award-winning e-zine A Country Rag (ACR). ACR has won innumerable honors as the number-one source for “all things Appalachian,” ranging from articles about Appalachian life and folklore to offerings of poetry and stories by Appalachian artists.

Harris approached Cooper about doing some writing for her magazine, and Cooper responded by writing her now-famous four-part series about Violette Wakeland (ed. note: this story is running in the Tullahoma News Sunday Lifestyles section until August 19th). She followed up the series with three other articles that appear in the archives at www.countryrag.com.

That means that at the upcoming book signing at Barclay Books, a veritable institution in Tullahoma, her husband will be reading her poetry. The store’s owner, Angela Arnold, is a supporter of Cooper’s writing and keeps her books in stock.

Says Arnold, “She is the writer I wish that I were. That’s not a personal statement. I admire her skill with writing about people. She is obviously a people person. So am I. But she knows how to write about it, and I don’t and I’m jealous. She writes as if she were sitting up there on that big rock watching everything unfold.” And perhaps she is.

Barclay has dreamed of holding a regular literary event at her bookstore and Cooper’s book signing is the kickoff event for “Literary Luncheons” that will be held in the bookstore on a regular basis. The book signing will take place September 8th from 1:00-5:00, and it will take the form of a mini-fest. Cooper’s husband, Alan Ross, a singer/ songwriter/ session vocalist in Nashville, will perform his music and will read Cooper’s poetry at different times during the afternoon. Ross himself is an author, and his books will also be available. Cooper will read excerpts from her newest book, A Baby Is… and will reveal the special way she wrote the book. One of the more interesting aspects of the book signing/mini fest is that there will be a discussion group about Cooper’s newest project: She is writing a novel.

“I realize I have to cut my teeth on a first novel, so I just jumped in and wrote it. I’d already thought of the storyline and I’ve got it written down. Now I’ve got to go back and add the research and fluff it up.” When pressed, she confesses it’s a book about women ruling the world. “But I’m not a feminist,” she quips, “I just married one.” The discussion at the book signing will center around the question, “What if women ruled the world?”

While Cooper is passionate about writing, she has other loves in her life. “I’m pretty wild about my kids. Gardening is a big one for me too. Before we lived here, we lived on an historic property in Nashville called Golden Acre, which was named the1945 Victory Garden of the Year for the entire United States. I renovated and recreated the gardens there. Then when we moved to the mountain I began to uncover some of the former landscaping up here and added some of my own.“

Other passions? “I still like computers. I built a few and sort of made myself sick of them for a while.”

What she doesn’t tell is that she bakes herb breads for people who are sick and suffering, believing that “bread heals.” She spends some time every day writing notes of encouragement - notes that she designs on her computer and prints -to other people, and love notes to her friends and family. She emails her mother every day. Due to chronic illness and a serious back injury, she is often sick and in pain herself, but she says she programs herself to be the Energizer bunny - she keeps going and going. She dreams of opening a non-profit women’s center on the mountain and of building computer centers for the area elementary schools. She still makes phone calls when she gets a tip about “spare parts.” But “wordsmithing” remains her life’s blood.

Writing plans for the future look bright. Cooper hopes to continue her column for the Tullahoma Sunday News. “I enjoy talking to people about the good deeds they do and what they care about. It gives the rest of us ideas about how to live better! I’ve written articles about people who were so self-sacrificing it brought tears to my eyes.” Asked what she would do differently in her past, Cooper responds promptly, “Nothing. I’m so happy now - right now - that if I went back and changed anything, it would upset the balance in my life today. I love it all. I plan to live to be 105.”