Theodosia Cooper died last week at the age of 91 in Little Rock. Theodosia was one of the late Joe Mcquany’s powerful allies in his successful effort to begin integrating AA meetings in the 1960s. Together they traveled the state with their message of recovery, and four decades later, she was on hand at the groundbreaking for Mcquany’s Serenity Home for Women project.

Theodosia had an undeniable presence. When she walked into a room in her three-inch heels, heads turned, and people who didn’t know her, whispered to each other, “Who’s that?”

Clearly, Theodosia was a “somebody,” and when she arrived at the groundbreaking of Serenity Park’s new women’s unit a decade ago, she caused the usual stir.

Theodosia was also the psychiatric social worker who helped Joe get sober at Little Rock’s state hospital. And together they changed the course of treatment for alcoholics in the state, especially for blacks.

On one level, they made an odd couple. Theodosia, a minister’s wife, had never taken a drink in her life, and Joe had been completely enslaved by alcohol. Furthermore they were miles apart in temperament—Joe, quiet and thoughtful; Theodosia, smart and sassy.

What they had in common was a strong faith in God and an intense desire to serve. And they were in their own ways magnetic personalities.

How it all began

After attending a symposium on alcoholism at Yale University the summer of 1961, Theodosia reported for duty at the Arkansas State Hospital in Little Rock, where Joe, a recovering alcoholic, was one of her cases.

It came as no surprise to her, she said, that Joe would become an internationally known author and teacher of the 12-Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

“He was a little too humble at first,” she said, “but he really knew how to work with people.”

Theodosia’s country-girl origins and rise to positions of influence and respect in the community is the stuff about which Broadway plays are written. Think Hello, Dolly and Auntie Mame.

Sure, she had charisma. But that’s not all. She had a brain. And a heart.

Born in Jennie, Arkansas, a tiny southeast Arkansas delta community, in 1925, Theodosia was orphaned at age four and went to live with an aunt and grandmother in neighboring Eudora. There she was raised as an only child, worked in her aunt’s beauty shop, faithfully attended church, and went to the local schools, where she excelled.

In her high school years, she was class valedictorian, class president, student council member, president of 4-H, and also basketball queen.

During these years, she discovered her aptitude for leadership and motivation as well as compassion for the less fortunate of her classmates. “I always sat with the kids who seemed to be hurting,” she says.

As for the boys, she says matter of factly, “I was a flirt. I could get anybody I wanted.” Case closed.

Show biz

Theodosia experimented briefly with local show biz, playing and singing with a group of girls whose specialty was imitating the pop singers of the time, both black and white—celebrities like the Mills Brothers, the Ink Spots, and the Andrews sisters.

After her high school graduation, she went to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff for her freshman year and then transferred to Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock, where she graduated with a BSE degree. During this time, she also met and married Jobe Vaughn Cooper, a Baptist minister.

She began her career as a science teacher at Eudora High School, and in succeeding years, her bent toward helping the disadvantaged led her to special education jobs in Jacksonville and Little Rock. When she wasn’t teaching, she took on social work research assignments in the field in St. Louis for the Catholic Board of the Children’s Guardian and the Methodist Settlement House.

These assignments took her to some dark places where prostitution, child abuse, and drug abuse flourished, and this is where Theodosia’s concern for the downtrodden and disadvantaged had begun to focus on alcoholism.

During her working years, she took courses at a variety of colleges and universities—the University of Arkansas for special education for the deaf, Eastern Michigan College for special education for handicapped children, and the University of Oklahoma for special studies on poverty and program planning for the disadvantaged.

Then came the summer school for alcohol studies at Yale. The leading scientists and educators in the field, along with lecturer and AA founder, Bill Wilson, attended it.

Theodosia, who had come to believe that alcoholism was a disability and a social ill of major significance, ate up the course work and became a profound believer in the transforming powers of the 12-Step program.

She returned to Little Rock with a heightened concern for the suffering alcoholics in her home state and the resolve to do something about it.

Theodosia put pressure on legislators and other officials to reorganize the State Hospital so that all patients, including blacks, would get better treatment. She and Joe also set about promoting the integration of AA meetings and helping blacks start AA meetings of their own.

In this, she got some help from three white men–Charles Clark, who sponsored Joe for thirty-two years before he died in 1993, Bill White and Neil Verdock, who began a subtle collaboration aimed at turning th meeting for blacks  at the State Hospital into the state’s first desegregated meeting.

It wasn’t that difficult. The three men—simply, and without fanfare—began attending the meeting for blacks. Bingo. Desegregation.

Not everything went that smoothly, however. A group of blacks in Dumas wanted to start a meeting with the help of Clark in the local Masonic hall, and in their efforts to assist, Theodosia and Joe, traveling in separate cars, were threatened with arrest by state troopers.

Polite but determined, the two pilgrims eventually prevailed.

“I can talk, and I’m not afraid of anybody,” Theodosia said.

The two founded the first black meeting at Wesley Chapel across from Philander Smith College in Little Rock, and in the mid sixties, Joe started attending some of the city’s white meetings.

Theodosia, who learned the 12 Steps at Joe’s quiet insistence, remained a devoted supporter of AA, which she said, “is as close to church work as you can get.”

Did she go to meetings? Nope, she said, “They wouldn’t let me talk.”