Cooper family

There's a tried and true Cooper family saying that Robie Wise of Newberry quotes: “It's fun coming back to your roots,” she says, using her cousin J.W. Mathis' line.

Dora Garmany, Wise's second cousin, first saw that fun years ago while watching the family she babysat for get ready for its big reunion.

Garmany came home, called her cousin and began planning a family get together of her own.

“I told her I had been with people I had been working for and they had a family reunion,” says Garmany. “I said, ‘Why can't we get together and have one?”

The two cousins sent letters to everyone they knew related to Garmany's grandfather, Baxter Cooper, and his brother, General Lee “Judge” Cooper.

Around 50 people showed up for their first reunion dinner, which was held either in 1980, according to the Cooper reunion book, or 1981, according to their reunion plaque.

“You find out its so much fun,” Garmany says. “You get to see people you know all your days but you didn't know you were related to.”

Now, nearly 30 years later, Garmany, 84, sits wearing a light sea blue formal and a three strand pearl necklace at a table with her hands folded in her lap. She has just finished a white tablecloth dinner with around 150 relatives and eight generations of Cooper descendants.

Their biannual reunions have not only grown by attendants, but now also includes a themed banquet, an awards ceremony, a Saturday brunch, a Friday evening picnic with games and Sunday church service.

To handle the events and crowds, the Cooper Reunion Committee formed and actually began planning for this year's July event right after their last reunion in 2006.

Their Saturday night banquet was prom-themed and held at Mid-Carolina Country Club. After dinner, emcees awarded superlative honors to the oldest, youngest and farthest traveled relative.

Then anyone who wanted to compete for the child, youth and adult King and Queen crown strutted across the room to music and awaited a non-family member's judging-the family recruited kitchen help to pick and crown winners.

Their reunions are usually held in Newberry where the Coopers were from, but some have been held out of state.

The event is a homecoming even for Cooper descendants who were born elsewhere.

LaTonya Hackley-Mathis, 30, drove down to Newberry from Thomasville, N.C.

She came to pay thanks to the family, many of whom drove up to Thomasville when her mother passed away last year.

She also wanted her 10-year-old son and two nieces to witness the unique bond and wide support that come with a family reunion.

“That togetherness,” she said, trying to pin down the word for that elusive dynamic that happens at large family gatherings.

“When we come here, we feel like we come home,” said Hackley-Mathis.

For committee members Sheila Boyd and Robie Wise, the reunions continue to blur the distinction between “family member” and “friend.”

They are forth cousins and friends who work hard through all the planning to unite their family, be it through horseshoes, volleyball or church.

“The main thing is to get everybody together,” says Boyd while separating the first of over 200 slices of American cheese onto a platter for Friday's picnic. “Families are very important.”

As relives began filing in Fairview Baptist's social hall for Friday's picnic, Garmany thought about her initiative in starting an event that now brings hundreds of family members together.

“I feel big,” she says smiling.

Hunter Family

n Leslie Moses

Staff Writer

Two years before George Hunter of Pomaria passed away, he wanted to make sure the family's pork-cooking tradition was passed on.

“He was barbecuing and said, ‘I want everyone to come out here and learn how to do this meat,'” says his daughter, Dorothy Houseal.

Houseal, her husband and cousin came outside for the all-night barbecue lesson and thereby secured the main staple of Hunter family reunions forevermore.

Houseal says the 14-hour whole-cooked pig is central to the reunions, which she helped start in 1982 with a cousin.

Now every two years around July 4, descendants of Nathan Hunter and Delia Mary Glenn Hunter come from as far away as Washington and New York for the Saturday afternoon meal and the pork so tender that it does not need any sauce.

Many also gather before Friday evening to help with the all-night pork roast and side dishes, and some stay Sunday morning for church.

The weekend span between Friday and Sunday is rich with tradition.

Houseal says they are continually sharing family stories and Saturday afternoon before the meal is their official talk time where a child or grandchild from each of the Hunter's 14 children tells a family tale.

During this time, Houseal has learned things she never knew about close, but now deceased family members.

She learned her father guarded German prisoners of war in France and that her aunt, who so proficiently counted money, never learned to read or write.

She also learned that her grandfather was sought out for his herbal remedies and had a Choctaw mother.

“That's probably where he learned all that stuff from,” she says about her grandfather's heritage. “You know we're beating ourselves up that he died before we were able to learn anything from him.”

Houseal has also shared her own interesting before-the-meal trivia like, yes, her grandmother did in fact have her last child at age 52.

“Nobody has a baby at 52, but she did,” says Houseal.

The family has also retrieved information on the ancestry Web site, ancestry.com, which Houseal says was well worth the $400 bill.

All the ancestry information will go in a book with a comprehensive family tree with photos for the '09 reunion.

Houseal, once a main planner, has since passed most of the planning work to daughter, Delia Houseal-Smith, 28. Houseal says it is important to include the younger generations in the planning to keep the event going.

“You have to let the young people do things,” she says. “If you don't include them in it they don't feel like they want to come because they're not a part of it.”

Houseal saw the interest of the younger generations in January of this year when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and because of chemotherapy, opted out of having another reunion.

“We decided we weren't going to do it and my daughter said no, we're going to do it because we've got to keep going,” Houseal said. “Behind the scenes they were already working the thing up.”

In addition to the reunion and annual Christmas dinners, the Hunters held their first, off-year, pre-reunion picnic at the old Pomaria Elementary school and the stamina of their gatherings was rebuilt.

“It was wonderful to see the family and all the babies born this year,” she says. “That's the thing-looking at the children and knowing that the family is going to keep going on. That's the whole idea of a family reunion. It's all worth it once you see your family.”