Our hometown of Cooper may look pretty sleepy but there’s a whole lot happening here!

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
April 2, 2007
COOPER, IOWA

The unincorporated town of Cooper may look a little sleepy when you drive or bicycle through on a typical day.

But an amazing number of activities happen in Cooper each year – everything from the Cooper Prom for all ages which draws people from across the state, to the Greene County 4-H Basketball Tournament, musical concerts, ice cream socials & soup suppers by the church, business seminars, land auctions, flea markets, arts festivals, funeral luncheons, graduation receptions, community suppers and more. About 800 people attended the “Super Cooper Days” celebrations each of the last two summers, with the 2006 event also serving as the community’s Quasquicentennial celebration.

The Franklin Township Trustees are (left to right) Jeff Kienast, Sue Sherlock and Chris Henning, who are shown here when they were helping paint the interior of the gymnasium in the Cooper Community Building.

That’s why on the new town sign, posted along the Raccoon River Valley Trail, which goes right through the heart of town, it says, “You’ve arrived in a very unusual place.”

The sign goes on to point out that Cooper is “the only town in the U.S. with the Zip Code 50059,” a tongue-in-cheek boast that is still true even though Cooper gave up its U.S. Post Office on March 16. The Zip Code remains, though, for those who use a cluster of postal boxes out front of the Cooper Community Building.

Cooper loves a good slogan – and has three other ones: “Everything’s super in Cooper!” “Cooper, Iowa – we argue about everything but still like each other.” And, as it said in a original poem recited in 1921 for the dedication of a new Franklin Township School, Cooper is a place “where everyone is friendly and society is good.”

Now in its 126th year, Cooper itself has a population of about 30. It is the hub of Franklin Township, which has a population of about 200, including a surprising number of young children now.

The township is six square miles, on some of the best farmland in the world. The three-member township Board of Trustees that governs the area includes chairperson Jeff Kienast, Chris Henning and Sue Sherlock, with Sharon Ostendorf serving as clerk. The board oversees the three township cemeteries, provides public safety and operates that Cooper Community Building, which was the old school gym, located in the northeast corner of town. The Methodist Church, which was founded in 1891, has services every Sunday.

Anchoring the “business district” is Monthei Welding & Machine, which Larry Dean Monthei serves farmers and companies all over the area. But Cooper is also headquarters for several large farm operations, as well as the Greene Bean Project, which coordinates local farmers producing a variety of beans for human consumption, and our news & opinion Internet site Offenburger.com. In September, 2003, my wife Carla and I bought a 105-year-old farmhouse, a mile south of town along the Raccoon River Valley Trail, had the house completely renovated and moved in June, 2004.

Iowa pioneer Isaac Cooper, for whom the town is named.

Cooper was founded in 1881 when the railroad came through, and was named after Des Moines railroad executive F.M. Hubbell’s father-in-law, Isaac Cooper, both of them pioneers in Iowa’s capital city. Cooper’s population reached a highpoint of about 250 in 1900. A devastating fire on November 27, 1921, burned most of the business district. The Franklin Township School closed in the summer of 1959 and students from this area began going to school in the Greene County seat of Jefferson. Until the 1970s, the Cooper school facilities housed the junior high for the Jefferson Community School District, but in 1981, the aged main brick building was torn down. The gymnasium, which had been built in 1955, was transferred to the ownership of the township Board of Trustees and is now the site of most community activities.

Cooper made news across Iowa in late July, 1980, when the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) brought 5,000 cyclists pedaling through town. As they approached from the west, a cannon roared a “one-gun salute” and a recording of the “1812 Overture” was played over and over. In town, the visitors found all kinds of food, drinks and foolishness. Three decades later, RAGBRAI riders who were here in ’80 were still saying it was one of the best stops ever in such a small place.

In 1981, Cooper made even bigger news – across the nation and around the world – with its centennial celebration. The 50 citizens back then decided no one from Cooper had ever become very famous, so they decided to have a contest to pick an honorary 51st citizen who could help bring the community some attention. A press release announcing the contest, telling applicants to state what they could do for the community, tickled the imaginations of news editors and was printed and broadcast all over the U.S. Suddenly well-known people in media, politics, business, religion, sports and entertainment were submitting their applications to the centennial committee. The letters and calls came from well-known columnists, major college coaches, radio broadcasters, even governors.

But the one that really stunned everybody around Cooper was a phone call from the producers of Johnny Carson’s highly-popular “Tonight Show” on NBC-TV, saying Carson himself was interested in the honor. At first he promised to have one of his nightly shows air live from the streets of Cooper. When that idea wound up being prohibitively expensive for the network, Carson instead brought three Cooperites to Burbank, California, to be guests on his show. Gerald Lawton, Terry Rich and Myrtle Whitcher were featured in a hilarious, 20-minute-long conversation with Carson during the show on June 17, 1981.

After that Carson show, the centennial was previewed in newscasts on the CBS, NBC, PBS and ABC television networks. The “Good Morning America” and “Today Show” morning news shows did stories. And so did newspapers from Los Angeles to Miami to New York City. That brought so much attention to this little town’s upcoming celebration that when the big day arrived on July 11, 1981, a crowd estimated at 12,000 packed Cooper! Cars were parked in farm fields all around the town. A 200-unit parade lasted two hours, and there was a whole lot of other fun.

Today, outside the Cooper Community Building, there is a marker that still hails Carson as Cooper’s 51st Citizen. It’s true he never actually visited here, but it’s also a certainty he’ll never be forgotten here.

The Carson monument today.

Rich says today that promotional ideas that came out of the Cooper Centennial helped him launch a lucrative career in cable television. He has now moved on to become director of the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, and remains very loyal to his Cooper roots.

Many of the community activities now are coordinated by the “Committee for a Super Cooper,” which was organized in 2004 to raise money to help sustain the community building, and to organize events that are good for the area. The committee, which has a dozen regular members, drafts others for help with activities. It occasionally appoints “Honorary Mayors of Cooper,” for special service to the area, and they include Matt Schutt, Dan Rasmussen and Carl Rowles.

The Super Cooper Committee can be contacted at 402 Main Street, Suite 4, Cooper, Iowa 50059.