THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 16, 1996 TAG: 9607160259
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY GUY FRIDDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 67 lines
Business leader and philanthropist Dudley Cooper, who died Monday at 96 at his Norfolk residence, was characterized by Rabbi Lawrence A. Forman as ``a modern role model, always a gentleman of grace and dignity who was very supportive.''
``He was sensitive to people who hadn't been able to make it in society,'' Forman said, ``and he thought that America's promise was so great that it was up to those who had been gifted with largess to lift up the fallen.''
Among his attainments as an optometrist, a Realtor, an owner with his brothers of 10 jewelry stores, he was most widely remembered for purchasing with family members the nearly-defunct Ocean View Amusement Park in 1944 and rebuilding it to entertain thousands of service personnel stationed in Hampton Roads.
Every Christmas, Cooper would bring clowns, magicians, and chimpanzees from the park to the children in hospitals. He chauffeured the chimps. ``Perfect gentlemen,'' he described them for reporter Fred Kirsch in 1981. ``Even when people would stare at them at a light, they'd just look straight ahead and not pay attention.''
He and family members also acquired Seaside Amusement Park in Virginia Beach and began operating in 1945 the Seaview Beach Amusement Park. For nearly 20 years Seaview was the nation's only major amusement park for blacks and also was a first in being staffed and managed by blacks.
Robert H. Mason, former Virginian-Pilot editor, recalled Cooper saying that the park was ``a social triumph and an economic disaster.''
``He was a man of keen intellect and a fine sense of humor,'' Mason said Monday.
Local Realtors said that Cooper had such a feel for property that he would go out at night to look at land for fear that if he was seen at the site, the price would skyrocket.
``Unfortunately that's true,'' Cooper told Kirsch. ``On one of my night trips I bought a place that didn't have a roof. Another time I fell down an elevator shaft.
``Many times I'd buy a place without ever stepping foot in it. I'd just walk around it and get a feel for it. If it felt good, I'd buy it.''
A graduate from Columbia University's School of Optometry, he became the first person in the country to sell glasses door-to-door. ``I'd examine people in their homes,'' he said. ``It was $1 down and 50 cents a week.
``Sure, I got cheated by some customers who took the glasses and never paid. But I never made much of it. Figured if they'd of had the money, they would have paid. It was more important that they had glasses to see with.''
In 1924 he met Mary Miller, a reporter on the New York World-Telegram who was visiting his sister.
Ten days later, they were on their way in the doc's roadster to Elizabeth City to be married.
``I had always dreamed I was going to marry a real wheeler-dealer,'' Mary Cooper said later. ``And here I was with this guy bouncing around in a broken-down car selling glasses.''
Kirsch observed that Cooper managed to function as a 16- to 18-hour-a-day entrepreneur without making enemies or leaving screaming tenants behind.
``I never saw much need for hurting or downgrading anyone or anything,'' Cooper said. ``If you have to do that to be successful, well, you're paying too big a price for what you're getting. I don't care what you've got.''
Funeral services will be held at the H.D. Oliver Chapel in Norfolk at noon Wednesday. Interment will follow at Forest Lawn Cemetery. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Dudley Cooper ran Ocean View and Seaview Beach parks, made glasses
and knew a good piece of land on sight.
KEYWORDS: OBITUARY PROFILE by CNB