Barbara Jean Cooper

Barbara Jean Cooper, 82, of Woolford passed away on Monday, January 20, 2014 at University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.

A fourth-generation Washingtonian, Barbara Jean grew up in Georgetown and American University Park in Northwest Washington, DC. She graduated in1949 from Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, where she met her future husband, Grover Cooper.

Her high school yearbook entry describes her as a "beautiful blonde whose favorite subject is that certain boy... loves to watch football and have fun... hopes to be a model or secretary." Barbara Jean attended University of Maryland at College Park, where she was a homecoming princess, and later worked as a secretary at the Central Intelligence Agency for 11 years, until she left just prior to the birth of her first child, Douglas, during the Kennedy Administration.

Barbara Jean's primary interest always was her family, which she raised in Potomac, Maryland. She had a great love of cooking, and she also loved the outdoors. As a young girl, Barbara Jean enjoyed horseback riding throughout Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC. She also loved fishing with her parents, George and Mathilda Simmons, her husband, Grover, and their children, in locations such as Hatteras, North Carolina; Panama City and Marathon, Florida; Ocean City, Maryland, and on the Chesapeake Bay.

Upon her parents' retirement, Barbara Jean's mother, Mathilda, wanted to have a farm, and so the Simmons family headed from Washington, DC, to the slower pace of life on Maryland's lovely Eastern Shore. Barbara's and Grover's love for the Chesapeake Bay flourished and never stopped, and now Barbara will join her husband and her parents in eternal peace at Historic Old Trinity Church in Woolford, Maryland, overlooking the water.

She is survived by three children, a son, Douglas Collins Cooper of Woolford, MD, a daughter Carolyn Elizabeth Cooper, a son Christopher Collins Cooper and his loving wife Stefanie Ann Cooper of Bethesda, MD, three grandchildren Christopher McKenna, Brendan McKenna and William McKenna all of Urbana, MD.

A funeral service will be held on Saturday, January 25, 2014 at 12 p.m. at Milton United Methodist Church in Woolford with Rev. Robert G. Kirkley officiating. Interment will follow at Old Trinity Churchyard. Family will receive friends Friday evening from 6 to 8 p.m. at Thomas Funeral Home, P.A. in Cambridge, MD. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, 2145 Key Wallace Drive, Cambridge, MD 21613.