Edward, We Hardly Knew Ye

Saturday was a sad day for Hot Springs. Martin Draper, a local dentist, and Edward Cooper, a local oral surgeon, died in a plane crash along with Edward’s two teenage daughters. In a town the size of ours, the ripple effect of such tragedies splashes onto many shores. It’s now been three days since the news, and I still can’t believe it. Shock seems like too small a word to convey what many in our city are feeling today. And that goes for all who knew Ed’s daughters, Katie and Libby. Saturday night, after the news began to spread about the crash, students gathered in the Lakeside High School field house to share their grief and encourage one another through their tears. Katie and Libby left a mark and will be sorely missed by everyone who knew them. “They were like sisters to me,” said one. “She treated me nice,” said another. “She always made me feel important,” said still another. And most didn’t have to say anything; their tears said more than their words ever could. One of the adults at the gathering told me something that seemed to capture the essence of these girls: “They loved Jesus so much. They were beautiful inside and out.” I’ve been around a lot of death and a lot of grief in my life, but does any grief hurt more than what we feel when children die?

I didn’t know the Cooper girls, but I know their mother Cheryl, their brother E.P., and I knew their dad Ed. Those who knew him best will tell you how much he loved God and his family and the Razorbacks and adventure and life. I was very aware of some of that, but I knew Ed in a bit different way. I got acquainted with him back in 1997 when my son Nathan was in need of serious facial reconstruction surgery. Nathan’s bite was off. He needed his upper jaw pulled forward and his lower jaw pushed backward—lots of cutting, lots of blood, tricky stuff. There were a few preparatory visits with Dr. Cooper prior to the surgery. And when everything was ready, Dr. Cooper and his partner, Dr. Lloyd, spent about 6-7 hours taking my son’s face apart and putting it back together again. When you trust your son into someone’s hands to do something as radical as this, you sort of want to know something about the guy with the hands. We had heard so many good things about Dr. Cooper—“Call me, Ed,” he told Dayna and me on the first visit—and he certainly lived up to the hype. I’m not just talking medically here; I’m talking personally. We talked about some of the common friends we shared. We talked about our common faith in Jesus. He spoke kindly of our church and spoke lovingly of his. He took an interest in us not just as patrons but as persons. He took time to explain everything involved with the surgery. He gave us confidence. He inserted humor in the conversation. He put my son at ease, and he made it very easy for us to trust our son into his capable hands. The surgery went very well. Our son ended up with a normal bite. And my family ended up with a new friend.

Ed was involved in so many things that it was hard not to bump into him around town. He was at all the Lakeside Ram games. We served together for awhile on the Board of the Charitable Christian Medical Clinic. He was a last-minute replacement to serve as a dentist on one of our church mission trips to Honduras—foregoing part of his family’s spring break plans that year so that he and his son could go take care of some people in great need. And, just as he did for countless other teenagers in Hot Springs, when the time was right, he took out our daughter’s wisdom teeth too. It was my joy to play basketball with him and his son a few times over the years as well. So our paths crossed now and then. And every time we bumped into one another he would ask me about my wife and kids, calling them all by name. He was especially interested in our son because of all the time he spent with him around the surgery. And when Ed asked how Nathan was, he was never satisfied with, “Oh, he’s fine.” He wanted details: what he was up to, how his kids were doing, how his work was going. And if you’re a parent you know that few things knit your heart closer to another’s than when that person takes a genuine interest in your kids. God did a lot of people a favor when he made Edward Cooper—my family included.

I knew Ed a little. I only wish I had known him more. Many in our town knew him very well, loved him very much, and already miss him more than words can say. So I pray for them. I pray for his wife and his son and his friends and his church and his staff. I pray that they experience God’s peace that passes understanding, God’s strength made perfect in their weakness, God’s grace that is sufficient for every need, and God’s good hope that if they know Jesus, they will hold those girls again and enjoy fellowship with Ed for all eternity.

I’ve got a lot of friends on the other side already, and now I’ve got another one. So while my grief is but a teardrop in the bucket compared to those who knew him best and loved him most, I write this blog for those on the outer edges of Ed’s life who knew him and loved him in our own way too. And I think I speak for them all when I say, “Edward, we hardly knew you in this life; we look forward to knowing you better in the next.”