From Wikipedia:
Jackie Cooper (born September 15, 1922) is an American Academy Award-nominated actor, Emmy Award-winning TV director, and TV producer and executive. He was a child actor who managed to transition to an adult career.
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Author wants you to write down family stories
Jackie Cooper is familiar to a lot of people in Middle Georgia, having written several books sharing the stories of his life. But while his latest book, “The Sunrise Remembers,” follows that format, its main purpose is to inspire others to become familiar with the stories of their own family.
Describing it as a purpose probably isn’t strong enough — make that a mission.
As he speaks to groups, teaches classes or does book signings, Cooper emphasizes how important it is for people to write down their own stories.
“We are losing all this valuable family history because we don’t write it down,“ he tells all who will listen.
Jackie Cooper has written five books chronicling the stories of his life. “The Sunrise Remembers, Memories from the Journey,” focuses on his life as a grandfather. The book, like all of his works, is a witness to the pleasure that others can have from reading the stories of someone’s life.
But even Cooper has some regrets about his own family stories that were not written down.
“My mother was one of seven, my father one of eight. I had this huge extended family that is all gone now, that I wish I knew more about, because they all play into our heritage,” he said.
Readers have been motivated after reading Cooper’s stories to start a collection of their own family memories. One man told Jackie his family was going to make it part of their Christmas tradition.
“He said that when they get together at Christmas, this year everyone was going to bring a story about their father, next year their mother, and so on.”
Invariably, when Jackie speaks to a group, people in the audience will say, “Uncle So and So knows all the stories of our family.”
But what is going to happen when Uncle So and So passes on and the stories aren’t written down?
“Writing them down ensures a form of immortality for your memories and the people that your memories are about,” Cooper advised.
The local author will be teaching a class about how to write your memoirs at Atlanta’s Margaret Mitchell House and Museum in January.
The title of Cooper’s latest book comes from a lesson he learned as a child about memories. As a little boy in South Carolina, he would often sit outside his parents’ mom and pop grocery store on a bench with two elderly women who were known to him as Aunt Ida and Aunt Lula.
Aunt Ida was a memory keeper — she knew everything about everybody in the town. She loved to talk and Jackie loved to sit and listen to her.
One day, six-year-old Jackie told Aunt Ida that she was the smartest person he knew. She laughed and replied that when she lay down at night, every thought in her head went away, just like it did for everybody else.
“I thought about that and worried that somebody might wake me up in the middle of the night and I wouldn’t know who I was,” Cooper said. “It also dawned on me after a few days that something had to happen to give us our thoughts and memories back.
“I asked Aunt Ida how we had our memories returned to us and she quickly said, ‘Why the sunrise remembers. Every morning when that sun comes up it brings back your thoughts and memories and my thoughts and memories. It does this for everybody all over the world.’ ”
Cooper will be at the Perry Bookstore on Dec. 13 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to sign “The Sunrise Remembers, Memories from the Journey.”
His classes at the Margaret Mitchell Museum in Atlanta are scheduled for Jan. 18 and 24 from 2 to 4 p.m. Registration information for the classes can be found at www.gwtw.org.
Taken from here
