Cooper Family - Page 1.

September 29. 2015:  My mother's oldest photos show her parents, Charley and Alice Cooper from the early years of the 20th century.  My grandmother Alice wrote on the back of this photo.  Charlie is on the right and Tom (or James) is on the left.  The next image of the back of this photo will reveal the confusion about his name.  I can see I need to do some old census data searches to verify the name of any siblings of my grandfather Charlie Cooper.

The back side of the photo is seen here.  Comparing her "a" and "o" shapes, it looks like she was writing James but neglected the "es" at the end.  If that smudge is masking a "cross bar" at the top of a capital "J", then she wrote Tom.  This is lead pencil writing as you can see.

This is a 1930 photo of my grandmother, Alice Whetzell Cooper.  She is the daughter of a German immigrant from Bavaria.

My mother is seen here at the front of her school in Bridgeport, Alabama in 1933 when she was in the third grade.  She is in the front row, third from the left.

This photo shows her at about 10 years old.  This is a very small photo that has been enlarged here and cleaned of any scratches and other marks of wear and tear in the photo box for so many years.  The actual picture measures 1-inch wide and 1.25 inches high.

Here she is with her two older sisters, Ruth (oldest) in the middle, and Nellie Mae on the right.  She preferred to be called Nell when she was married with children from my first memories.  The best guess on the age of the photo is 1936 when my mother was 12 years old.  The edges are a bit worn as you can see by the wrinkles.

This is the back side of the "sisters" photo above.

Here is another of the three sisters photos from a few years later, maybe 1942.   Their father cast his shadow on the ground.  This was a morning photo as I recognize the location of the photo.  They all have that sunburn look and squinting into the sunlight makes it worse.

This photo of Alice (my grandmother) is from that same roll of film in 1942.

Charlie always had a "pickup" truck when I was growing up.  This is one he had before I was born.

This next photo shows my mom, probably in 1945 with dark lipstick, which was the fashion at that time as seen in movies of the era.  At this time, she is already the young mother of my two older siblings from her first marriage.

This photo shows mom at about age 21 with her friend Florence "Flo" Pack.  It was Flo and her husband Clinton that introduced my parents to each other.  They were married in June 1946.

Here are Flo and Clinton on the same dock.

Here are the happy couples apparently on a double date in 1946.

This is Clinton's 1941 Pontiac seen in several photos from this time frame.