Missing Ms. Cooper

This past weekend a very special person in our families' life passed away after a short battle with cancer. Nancy Cooper was the principal at Jack's school. But she was so much more than just a principal. We have known her for more than 20 years but only in the past few years since our boys started school have we truly been able to realize what an amazing lady she was.

Every year, we attend the Illinois School Board Conference in Chicago. It sounds dull, but after the meetings and politics, and such, it's just a really fun time to hang out together and socialize. Travis was on the school board before Parker even started school and I can vividly remember sitting at the House of Blues telling Ms. Cooper all about Parker and what an amazing kid he is. (Probably the same stuff every parent says to her!) She listened attentively and asked me questions about him and then she told me which teachers would be a good fit for him. Of course, she was right on the money. Her grandson was in Parker's kindergarten class and she would often pop in to say hello. Parker thought that made his kindergarten class pretty darn special.

Last year, it was proposed that we turn our 2 elementary schools into "Attendance Centers" which means that one school would have pre k, kindergarten and 1st grade and the other school would have 2nd and 3rd grade. This was a hotly debated topic in town and in order to get a feel for the two schools, Travis visited them and was given a tour by the each school's principal. While he walked with Ms. Cooper, children would run up to her and give her a hug. She knew every child by name and could tell Travis something unique about each of them. The kids LOVED her and so did her staff. She never ever had a bad word to say about any child (even the ones that she could have said a lot of things about!) One of my friends has a child who had a lot of discipline issues as a kindergartner and spent a lot--I mean A LOT--of time in Ms. Cooper's office. He loved her. When told that she had passed away, he was crushed. I think it speaks volumes about her and the kind of principal that she was that even the kids that knew her because they got into a lot of trouble just adored her.

If you haven't had a principal like Ms. Cooper, it's hard to imagine just how wonderful it is to have someone like her running your child's school. She was ever-present. She was the first face the kids saw when they got off the bus in the morning and the last one to send them out the door in the afternoon. She was always walking the halls and visiting a classroom and talking to parents and teachers and most especially--students. She definitely didn't hide out in her office punching in numbers and charting performance on a graph. She didn't have to. She knew everything that went on in the school.

She leaves a simple legacy. All she did was make a whole lot of students feel very special, make a whole lot of parents feel comfortable sending their precious children to school, make a whole lot of teachers and staff feel like their opinions and experiences were valuable assets and helped McGaughey win a whole lot of awards and accolades on a state and national level. And I'm so glad my kids had the opportunity to know her and be guided by her. She will be missed.