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Memorial for Jacqueline "Mary" Cooper
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Born in Portland, Oregon on Mar. 6, 2015
Departed on Mar. 6, 2015 and resided in Palos Verdes Estates, CA.
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Friday, Mar. 13, 2015
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Please click on the links above for locations, times, maps, and directions.
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JACQUELINE "MARY" COOPER 1924-2015
Jacqueline "Mary" Sherman Cooper, age 90, a 55-year resident of Palos Verdes Estates, passed away peacefully on February 27, 2015 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. She was born in 1924 in Portland, Oregon, and was purportedly a direct descendant of General William Tecumseh Sherman. Mary was married for 60 years to the late Robert I. Cooper, a Torrance attorney originally from New York City who died in 2012. Together they raised their six children on the Peninsula, and were very proud of the fact that all six attended University of California campuses, including Santa Barbara, Berkeley, Davis, San Diego and UC Riverside. During the 1980's and early 1990's, Mary was the Director of the Peninsula Chamber of Commerce. She and her husband were extremely active in the Palos Verdes community, and were founding members of the Norris Theatre, and Malaga Bank and involved with many other local institutions. Like many of her generation, Mary had a difficult childhood and early adulthood, living through the Great Depression and World War II. Growing up in Oregon, and raised in the Catholic Church, the daughter of Jack Sherman and Helen Enberg, she lived some of her early years on a farm in Oregon, and at one time lived in a tiny town called Drain. She spent many memorable summers at the Oregon Coast , in a small resort town called Seaside Beach. Mary attended the University of Oregon, where she was in the Delta Gamma sorority, a source of life-long friendships, and was a Duck for life. A sign of the times in which she lived was the loss of a fiancé, who was killed in World War II before they could be married. Mary met her husband Bob Cooper in 1952 at a party in Berkeley, when they were both living in San Francisco, and they married three months later. They met during the post-college years when young singles gravitated to San Francisco, and they loved the San Francisco Bay Area during their entire lives. They had settled in the Palo Alto area, near the Stanford campus where her husband had attended law school. But in 1960, when her husband got a new job for an aerospace company, TRW, located in the South Bay area, they had to move from their beloved San Francisco area, relocating to Palos Verdes. Little did they know that Palos Verdes would become their cherished home for more than 50 years. All of their six children graduated from PV High, and all five of her boys played in Lunada Bay Little League. After raising their children, Mary and Bob enjoyed their later years, traveling extensively (Rome was always her favorite) Mary had a bridge guild with whom she played cards for many years, and she was always a seamstress, making and altering her own dresses. Mary was a literature and history buff and she devoured book after book from her extensive library, especially historical novels. She felt a close kinship with Ireland as she was 25% Irish (in addition to being part Danish, Welsh and English). She loved baseball, a good thing since she raised five sons in addition to her daughter, and she was a life-long San Francisco Giants fan dating from her San Francisco days. Even through Alzheimer's disease, Mary's lovable personality and sense of humor continued to show through--her distinctive laugh never changed. Despite her many accomplishments, our mother probably never bragged about herself her entire life, although she could have, and she was part of that self-sacrificing generation that did not ever think they were anything special. Her humility, along with her beauty and intelligence, made her beloved of her children and many friends. She is survived by her six children and 10 grandchildren, Steve and Saundra Cooper (Chris and Tory), James and Beth Cooper (Breanne and Andrew), Joan and Steve Graham (Lauren, Jacqueline and John), Bob and Margarita Cooper (Lucas and Daniella), John Cooper and Brian and Suzann Cooper (Bailey). A requiem mass for Mary will be held on March 13, 2015 at Saint John Fisher Church at 1:00 p.m.
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