Community is where many Coops find their vocation, passion
By Ben Cox
Photo/Ben Cox, Submitted to The Source
The Coop family has a long history of public service in the Jacksonville area. Louise C. Coop was the first woman to run for countywide office in the State of Illinois and won.
She was elected Morgan County Clerk in 1958 and served in that position until her retirement in December of 1974, having previously served 20 years as deputy clerk of the county under county clerk George T. Douglas.
Her son, Harry Lee Coop, a longtime firefighter for the City of Jacksonville, says that Douglas depended a lot on his mother to run the functions of the clerk’s office near the end of his term. “He was quite a guy, but he depended on Mom so much that one day one of the attorneys came in and asked for something. He said he got real nervous and said, ’Nobody’s here. Nobody’s here. Louise is gone.’ So, he did depend on her a lot.”
Harry Lee Coop says that his mother also received the first electric typewriter ever purchased by the county, and many days as he would walk down to the courthouse from school, he could hear the echoes of the typewriter, “She could type on a regular typewriter, 95-100 words a minute. When she got the electric, she could get up to 115-120 words a minute.”
Harry Coop says that after high school and a short stint with Anderson Clayton, he was looking for a better paying job, and more importantly, a pension. Coop says that he was only making about $4,800 a year early on, and by his retirement age, he was paying that much into his pension fund. He waited to test to become a firefighter, which wasn’t as rigorous compared to today’s standards, he says. He received the top score in his class and was the first one hired.
“My first day was a Thursday and they had me slide the pole to get me used to that. And the chief was really gentle about it. He said, ’You just look at it until you feel comfortable getting on it.’ And so it wasn’t long and I slid full. That wasn’t any big deal. Then that afternoon, our first call was on Webster [Street] and it was a garage fire and it was a pretty good little fire. I got out there and didn’t know what to do. We had no training like [my grandson] received. Our training was right on the job and I was given a pair of boots and a coat and a helmet. We got down there [to the fire] and my feet were just soaking wet. Come to find out the boots they gave me had big tears in the back soles, so they filled up with water pretty quick. I got a new pair of boots after that and didn’t get the hand-me-downs.
We got the fire put out and found out when you get back to the station, you’re not done. You got to get the truck back in the order. I always washed the truck. The reason for that was if you washed the truck, you went all the way around it to observe if anything was missing or if it was fully ready to go again.”
Harry Coop put in 31 years in the fire department, retiring as a captain in 1995. Much of that time he spent alongside his brother, the late John “J.C.” Coop.
Harry Coop’s son, Andy Coop, had a much different path to public service, opting instead to become a police officer.
“I had a couple of friends that worked at the [Morgan County] sheriff’s department. They were jailers and dispatchers and stuff like that. Back in those days, you’d just go and hang out there with them when they were working. I did that and kind of started seeing the deputies and the workings of the department and everything. I think that was what kind of started making me focus on law enforcement. I ended up getting my associate’s degree in law enforcement
administration, and then I was working at a little grocery store in South Jacksonville. The South Jacksonville Police Department had a full-time or a part-time opening. I applied for that and Richard Evans was the chief. Then, he interviewed me and some other people and then agreed to hire me part-time.”
Andy Coop says that much like his father, there were no academy requirements for part-time officers at that time, it was all on the job training. Outside of 40 hours of firearms training, Coop says he went right to work, going on his own by New Year’s Eve 1992. His part-time work eventually led to him taking a test to become a full-time officer, which he passed. After spending four years with South Jacksonville, Andy Coop moved on to become a sheriff’s deputy. He worked for the Sheriff’s Department before eventually landing with the Jacksonville Police Department in October 1998. Andy Coop was with the JPD from 1998 to 2021, until landing a role as a firearms analyst with the Illinois State Police.
Luke Coop, who was born shortly before his father Andy Coop’s move to the JPD, says he simply followed in his footsteps: “I think it was more or less, I saw him doing it growing up, being a police officer, I always thought it was something cool. I never wanted to sit at a desk, at an office job or anything. I just can’t sit still, so I wanted something where I could constantly be on my feet or do something new every day and want something in uniform rather than work a nine to five, go there, sit at the desk, type on a computer, whatever. That’s part of what drew me to law enforcement, I think, is it’s something different every day. You never know what’s going to happen, what to expect.”
Luke Coop says he scored in the middle of the pack on his first try for the patrolman test with JPD approximately six years ago but didn’t get hired off of that rather large list. He says he casted about to try to find other departments that were hiring, but eventually found that the JPD was hiring again and reapplied.
“They needed four more people after they had exhausted that first list I was on. So, I went ahead and took the test again and I scored pretty high on that and ended up getting hired off of it. Ultimately, I think what drew me to law enforcement, public service in general, was probably seeing my dad do it and following in his footsteps.”
He says that now that he’s in uniform, people always ask him about his family, “No matter where I go here in town, people read my name tag and ask who my dad is, who my grandpa is. I’ve experienced that a lot, so I always tell them. They’re always like ’Oh, those are great guys,’ and knew them and they’ve always got a little story about how they know them or their experience with them.”
The latest Coop to join public service is Alex Coop, another son of Andy and April Coop. Alex Coop graduated from the fire academy mid-April. He says that his desire to join public service as a firefighter started after graduating from Routt Catholic High School.
“I knew I wanted to do something more physical that was in sports and everything. I first started off enlisting in the military and did some time in the Illinois National Guard. And then, once I got back home, I realized that you got more time on your hands than you know what to do with really. So after training, I went to EMT school over at Lincoln Land Community College and got my EMT license.”
Alex Coop says the EMT license set him up for the prerequisite to get hired with the Jacksonville Fire Department. He was already a leg up on many of his classmates at the fire academy, because he had also served as a firefighter with the National Guard. He said he was one of the younger people in his class at the fire academy.
He believes that the trend of young people staying away from public service is starting to reverse. He notes, “There were more guys showing up [to the academy] that were 20 or so from volunteer departments. But I definitely see a lot of it in the smaller towns where you see those younger people applying. When you go to Belleville or Edwardsville, it’s still a little bit older. I’ve noticed that. But I do feel like there is a lot more younger people coming in now.” Jacksonville Fire Department Chief Matt Summers says that Alex Coop’s recruiting class was one of the largest the department has seen in three decades.
Harry Coop says he’s proud of the family as a whole for their years of work, including his wife Kaye, who spent several years as an emergency room registered nurse at then Passavant Area Hospital in Jacksonville.
“I’m very proud of everybody here. When we started, like I said, it was on the job training, but what they go through now and what Alex had to go through, I don’t know that many of us would’ve made it, because it’s very rigorous.”
He says that the rigorous and physical training along with all the new technology has made public service a different world. Like the times, the Coop family continues to adapt to continue to provide public service to the Jacksonville community.
