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Vol. 33, No. 21
May 23, 2018
Rainy and RAW Photos from Riverside’s 11th annual art fair PAGE 16
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Remembering Riverside’s ‘great heroic figure’ Rev. Hedley H. Cooper was village’s first foreign war casualty
By BOB UPHUES
I
Editor
n August 1945, a postal carrier delivered a letter from Lt. J.P Dixon, a G.I. stationed in France in the months after the war in Europe had ended, to St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in Oak Park. The brief letter was addressed to Rev. Hedley Heberr Cooper, who was at one time ime the priest-in-charge of the church and whom m the soldier hoped still resided there. Dixon wrote that a French woman had shown him a silver communion set – a small chalice, communion plate and two containers for water and wine -- inscribed with the following: “Rev. Hedley H. Coooper, St. Christopher’s her’s Church, Oak Park, Illinois, linois, April 22, 1917.” The letter also stated d that th t the th communion set reportedly had been found “on the Verdun battlefield in 1918.” Lt. Dixon might have guessed, correctly, that Cooper had been among the American troops stationed in the vicinity of Verdun that year. No doubt, Dixon surmised, See COOPER on page 8
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GRAVESIDE: Just days after Rev. Hedley H. Cooper’s (portrait, at left) death during a gas and artillery attack on May 27, 1918, YMCA chief M.P. McNaughten and Mrs. F.A. Rutherford placed flowers on Cooper’s grave (above, left) and that of fellow YMCA volunteer Halliday S. Smith. The photo is a still from a U.S. Army Signal Corps movie documenting the 42nd Division’s time near Baccarat, France.
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