FAMILY FINDS SOLACE IN SUMTER NATIVE'S
IMPACT S
A F T E R H I S D E AT H FROM COVID-19
BY KAYLA GREEN
omeone held his hand as the virus took him, but it was someone he had never seen before the hospital, masked, gloved. Nurse Jamie promised she would. That was hard, his sister said. It's hard to get closure when you can't be there to say goodbye. In all the numbers, there are names. Kelvin Kenyatta Cooper, a Sumter native and retired U.S. Army major, died at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans on April 21. A month before the 1984 Mayewood High School graduate's 55th birthday, the brother of five, father of three, husband and son succumbed to the coronavirus ravaging communities across the world. The Coopers are no newcomers to medical hardships. Cancer killed one of his sisters five years ago on its third attempt. They could hold her hand for that end. "Coping with a second child in five years is tough," said Karen Wrighten, Cooper's youngest sibling, of their mother. Wrighten lives in Charleston now, and other siblings live in Charlotte and Atlanta, so the separation from their mother who still lives in Sumter is hard. "We couldn't be there for him. We couldn't go see him. He was WWW.THEITEM.COM/SUBSCRIBE 26
MAJ. K E LV I N K E N Y A T T A COOPER 1965 - 2020
the brother that no matter where he was overseas, he was somehow there for a milestone. He was supportive of all of us," Wrighten said. Cooper's wife, Nicole, is holding up "as well as she could." Their triplets are 10. The girl, Laila Nicole, was able to ring the bell signifying her brain tumor was gone just before her father came down with COVID-19, something
Wrighten described as "beauty in our brokenness." Wrighten, her siblings and her mother were not allowed to attend the funeral in New Orleans, one of the hardest-hit cities in the country. They held a service over Zoom and plan to have a memorial service with full military honors and burial this fall. Cooper's father was in the Air Force, and he instilled his love of country, God and family in his family, especially Cooper, Wrighten said. The fourth-oldest sibling lived fully. He was the die-hard Pittsburgh Steelers fan in a sea of Dallas Cowboys and Carolina Panthers. According to his obituary, he was "clearly their No. 1 fan." He actively participated in civic and fraternal organizations after he moved to his wife's hometown of New Orleans following his military retirement. At the time of his death, he was president of the Gamma Rho Chapter of Omega Psi Psi Fraternity Inc. Cooper began college at Johnson C. Smith University before joining the Army. After several years, he completed his bachelor's in criminal justice from Benedict College. In 1995, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant officer and retired in 2012 as a major.
