David Jackson Cooper Jr.

COLUMBIA - Services for David Jackson Cooper, Jr., 74, will be held at 3pm Sunday, February 15, at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 2827 Wheat St. Following the service, the family will receive friends at Heyward Hall. Private burial services will be announced later. Memorials may be made to the Carolina Wildlife Center, 5551 Bush River Rd., Columbia, SC 29212. Mr. Cooper, a native of Henderson, NC, died unexpectedly at his home on February 10. He was the son of the late David Jackson Cooper and Mary Hardy Cooper. He attended Punahou School in Honolulu, HI, and was a 1963 graduate of The Citadel. He was a 1967 graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law. Subsequently, in addition to private practice, he served as an attorney for the SC Dept. of Mental Health, the 5th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, the S.C. Workers’ Compensation Fund, and as Counsel and Director of Research for the Judiciary Committee of the SC House of Representatives. He retired in 2003 as an attorney and Director of Research for the Legislative Counsel of the SC General Assembly. He was a member of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve (1962-68), and retired in 2000 with the rank of Captain from the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, U.S. Naval Reserve. Thereafter he was retained by MPRI, a defense contractor, and deployed to Afghanistan in 2004-05 where he served as a Military Law Expert and aided in the development of previously nonexistent military law for the Afghan Ministry of Defense. Mr. Cooper was an active member of St. John’s Episcopal Church where he served as a Lay Reader, Chalice Bearer and vestryman. He is survived by his three daughters, Sullivan Cooper of Columbia, Elizabeth Cooper of Columbia, and Mary Hardy Cooper of Asheville, N.C.; sister, Ferebee Cooper of Roswell, GA, and half-brother, John Drewry of Wilmington, NC.