Willard Cooper, artist and a professor of art at Centenary College for some 30 years, is dead. Cooper died of pneumonia in Costa Rica on Aug 28, said daughter Arden Rembert Brink. Surviving Cooper is his wife, Phyllis Cooper, and progeny.
Among the artists who developed under Cooper's professorship were watercolorist William McNamara of Ponca, Ar, and Centenary art department head Bruce Allen.
Willard and Phyllis attended art exhibits and concerts in Shreveport for some 40 years, and entertained art appreciators at their vine-covered house in Broadmoor. Willard was tall, lean and witty. He used his joie de vivre to keep the art scene from pretentiousness.
He was preceded in death by his artist son, David.
In recent years Willard and Phyllis were cared for by Arden and David Brinks in Maine, said Bruce Allen. Recently they relocated to Costa Rica.
Said his daughter in an email to Allen, "While Daddy's health had begun to decline quite a bit before the move here, he was well enough to enjoy Costa Rica and we're glad of that. The countryside here offers many scenes that are just the sort of thing he loved to sketch and paint, and you could see the artist in him scoping things out, mentally constructing compositions as we drove around and even just right out our front door. We would have loved it if he could have added Costa Rica to his "Maine to Spain" collection. He was never well enough to actually do any work, but I enjoy knowing that he thought about it and perhaps was making sketches in his mind."
Of Phyllis, Arden writes, " He and Mom were so devoted to each other that she certainly feels the loss deeply. She is grateful too, though, that he didn't suffer and takes considerable comfort from that. We're glad that she's here with us and even though we've been here less than a year, we've made some dear friends here who will help us make sure that she doesn't feel alone. We continue to hope that people from "our other life" back in the U.S. will come visit us here and I know now, more than ever, she'll enjoy and appreciate that."
A Shreveport memorial service will be held in another month or so.
arden@on-the-brink.com
phone (from the U.S.): 011.506.447.44.15
mail: #SJO14589, 7979 NW 21st Street, Doral, FL, 33122-1616
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