Jack Cooper was a dentist, but sometimes in a small town any medical person will do.
He once agreed to X-ray the damaged wing of an owl so the owner could treat the injury.
But Cooper also once turned down the chance to do some oral surgery on a sheep, saying it was just “too much of an undertaking,” said his wife, Jenny Cooper.
Cooper died Oct. 2 at an Alamosa care center. He was 74.
A Texas native who was reared in Tulsa, Okla., Cooper fell in love with Colorado during a visit when he was a kid. When he completed dentistry school, he moved to Alamosa and set up practice.
Devoted to his patients, he attended to emergencies in the middle of the night, gave patients his home phone number and always called them after surgery to see how they were, said his longtime dental assistant, Frankie Gray.
He also did free dental work for Vietnam veterans and for Vietnamese people who had moved to the San Luis Valley, she said. They sometimes repaid him by going to his house and cooking dinner for the Cooper family.
For a time, he set up an office in Antonito, renting space in a mortuary. “He liked dentistry because he could help people,” Jenny Cooper said.
He often taught classes at Adams State College, including anatomy, biology and physiology. He also took a cooking class.
After he retired in 1990, Cooper pursued the things he had already started – a book on Zebulon Pike, black-and-white photography, camping, hiking and climbing, giving tours of the area and working with the San Luis Valley Historical Society, which he had helped found.
The book on Pike, to be published later this year, debunks earlier stories about Pike that painted him as a bumbling explorer, said Doug Clausen, whose Colorado Springs company will publish the book.
Cooper’s research shows that Pike wanted to get captured by the Spanish army so he could gather intelligence for the U.S. government, Clausen said.
And the criticism of Pike because he didn’t climb the peak named for him was unfair, said Clausen, because Pike didn’t have the proper clothes for such a trip.
Jack Kyle Cooper was born Sept. 15, 1932, in Beaumont, Texas. He put himself through dental school at Washington University in St. Louis with a variety of jobs, including harvesting peas in Illinois.
He married Nita Foster in 1955; she died in 1995. He later married Genevieve Grund meyer. They lived in Alamosa until about seven years ago, then moved to Monte Vista.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters, Anne K. Gruensfelder of Tucson and Lynne C. Love of San Antonio; four grandchildren; and his sister Carolyn Grine of San Antonio.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
