Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr (1927 - 2004)

Born 6 Mar 1927 in Shawnee, Pottawatomie, Oklahoma, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Gertrude Bernice (Olson) Cooper — married 29 Aug 1947 (to 1971) in Oahu, Honolulu, Hawaii Territory, United States

Died 4 Oct 2004 at age 77 in Ventura, Ventura, California, United States

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Biography

Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr is Notable.

Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper Jr. (March 6, 1927 – October 4, 2004), (Col, USAF), was an American aerospace engineer, test pilot, United States Air Force pilot, and one of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the first manned space program of the United States.

1927	Born in Shawnee, Pottawatomie, Oklahoma, USA.
1945	Graduated from High School, enlisted in the US Marine Corps.
1947	Married Trudy B. Olson (to 1971).[1]
1948	Daughter Camala Keoki Cooper is born.
1949	Transferred his commission to the US Air Force. During his career with the Air Force, he was awarded the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
	Legion of Merit	Distinguished Flying Cross
1950	Daughter Janita Lee Cooper is born
1956	Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering, USAF Institute of Technology, Ohio
1959	Selected by NASA in Astronaut Group 1. [2]
1963	Flew on Mercury 9 as Pilot, call sign "Faith 7". Awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. [3]
	Mercury 9	NASA Distinguished Service
1965	Flew on Gemini 5 with Pete Conrad. Awarded the NASA Exceptional Service Medal. [3]
	Gemini 5	NASA Exceptional Service
1970	Retired from NASA
1972	Married Suzan Taylor
1979	Daughter Colleen Taylor Cooper is born
1980	Daughter Elizabeth Jo Cooper is born
1984	Co-founder of Mercury Seven Foundation, fore-runner of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation and its United States Astronaut Hall of Fame. [4]
1990	Inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame. [5]
2004	Died of heart failure at home in Ventura, Ventura, California, USA
2007	Daughter Janita Lee Cooper died[6]

Obituary

Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper Jr., one of the most colorful of the Mercury 7 astronauts, whose exploits and foibles were made famous in the book and movie "The Right Stuff," died Monday at his home in Ventura. He was 77.

The cause of death was not announced, although friends said he had been in failing health in recent years.

"As one of the original seven Mercury astronauts, Gordon Cooper was one of the faces of America's fledgling space program," said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. "He truly portrayed the right stuff."

It wasn't always thought so. An iconoclast given to speaking his mind with little concern for the prim public image the government was trying to foster about the original astronauts, the Shawnee, Okla., native was nearly bypassed for the history-making flight of Faith 7, the last of the Mercury missions.

But he proved so cool under pressure that he nodded off while awaiting blastoff on May 15, 1963. And he was such a good "stick-and-rudder man" that he overcame a series of problems to bring the capsule down manually — and so close to the aircraft carrier sent to pick him up that they didn't need the helicopter to bring him in.

The Mercury program was the United States' first manned space venture and the first step in the country's journey to the moon. All the flights were solo. Cooper, who was slightly built and thus fit well into space capsules, was the last American to fly alone in space.

Cooper's second spaceflight was with Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr. aboard the suspenseful, and even more troubled, eight-day Gemini mission in August 1965. Among the flight's problems were ones that caused the craft to roll. Yet it stayed in orbit for 191 hours and traveled 3.3 million miles, establishing a space endurance record.

NASA said space program veterans remembered Cooper as a man who "always had a smile on his face." In "The Right Stuff," actor Dennis Quaid played the cocky astronaut.

"He never said, 'You can't do it.' He was gung-ho on everything," said Norris Gray, a NASA preparedness officer during the Mercury program in the early '60s.

O'Keefe said that Cooper's efforts and those of his fellow Mercury astronauts — Alan Shepard, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, John Glenn, M. Scott Carpenter, Walter Schirra Jr. and Donald "Deke" Slayton — "serve as reminders of what drives us to explore."

Of the original seven, only Glenn, Schirra and Carpenter are still alive.

Cooper was born March 6, 1927, the only son of Leroy Gordon Cooper Sr., an Air Force colonel who befriended Amelia Earhart, according to accounts of Cooper's life. The younger Cooper, an admirer of the science fiction character Buck Rogers, was taking the controls alone by the time he was 7. He served in the Marine Corps, then became a fighter pilot after World War II.

In the late 1950s, Cooper was a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert before being selected from 110 volunteers to join the new space program in 1959 — a couple of years after America had been humiliated by the Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik I satellite. He signed up out of "plain curiosity," he said later.

To his disappointment, the Gemini flight was Cooper's last venture into space. He served as a backup command pilot for Apollo 10 in May 1969 but never went to the moon. He left NASA and retired from the Air Force in 1970.

In his 2000 autobiography, "Leap of Faith: An Astronaut's Journey Into the Unknown," he recounted, in his typically unabashed way, a visit with President Kennedy in the Oval Office. After hearing some of Cooper's buddies kidding him about his relationships with women, Kennedy, he claimed, got up from his rocking chair and approached him. "You and I have the same problem," Kennedy whispered, Cooper reported.

In the book, Cooper also embarrassed some of his old NASA colleagues with tales of UFO encounters and conspiracy theories. Claiming that film that he shot from Gemini 5 had been confiscated, he quoted President Johnson telling him, "Son, I ordered it classified."

In 1978, he asked a U.N. panel to coordinate data on UFO encounters "to determine how best to interface with these visitors in a friendly fashion."

Cooper had a wide range of interests; a NASA biography listed his hobbies as treasure-hunting, archaeology, racing, flying, skiing, boating, hunting and fishing. In his later years, Cooper designed and tested aircraft and engine types in Southern California, NASA said, working out of an office at Van Nuys Airport.

Even many years after leaving NASA, Cooper never gave up his love for outer space. He continued to argue that America should go back to the moon and beyond, to Mars.

Asked in a Times profile in 1993 what he would say to people who say we can't afford the cost of manned flights to other planets, he replied, "Well, I think that's really a pessimistic attitude."

Among his numerous awards were the Air Force Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, NASA's Exceptional Service Medal, the Collier Trophy and the Harmon Trophy."

Gordon Cooper's legacy is permanently woven into the fabric of the Kennedy Space Center," center director Jim Kennedy said Monday. "His achievements helped build the foundation of success for human space flight that NASA and the Kennedy Space Center have benefited from for the past four decades."

Cooper, who was divorced from his first wife, is survived by his wife, Susan, and four daughters.^[7]

Sources

1. ↑ Carpenter, M. Scott, et al. We Seven (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), p. 52.
2. ↑ Wikipedia List of Astronauts, by Year
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Agency Awards Historical Recipient List
4. ↑ Astronaut Scholarship History
5. ↑ Hall of Fame Bio
6. ↑ Obituary for Janita Lee
7. ↑ Obituary

See also:

• Wikipedia: Gordon Cooper
• Wikidata: Item Q312833, en:Wikipedia
• Find a Grave, database and images (accessed 25 August 2021), memorial page for Gordon “Gordo” Cooper Jr. (6 Mar 1927–4 Oct 2004), Find A Grave: Memorial #9554259, ; Maintained by Find A Grave Cremated, Ashes scattered, who reports a A portion of his ashes were sent into orbit around the Earth.
• "United States Social Security Death Index," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JGZ3-TYC : 20 May 2014), Gordon Cooper, 04 Oct 2004; citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing).
• "United States Census, 1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XC48-1DQ : accessed 19 January 2017), Leroy G Cooper Jr. in household of Leroy G Cooper, Tecumseh, Pottawatomie, Oklahoma, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 54, sheet 12B, line 75, family 319, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 1929; FHL microfilm 2,341,663.
• "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VBKN-715 : accessed 19 January 2017), Leroy G Cooper in household of Leroy G Cooper, Ward 6, Shawnee, Shawnee City, Pottawatomie, Oklahoma, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 63-59, sheet 3A, line 10, family 50, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 3328.
• Ancestry Profile