Birth: Apr. 24, 1922Profession: Jul. 31, 1953Death: Sep. 5, 2009
Barbara Cooper, RSCJ, Religion and Prison Literacy Educator
Barbara (Bobbie) Cooper, RSCJ, director of religious education, librarian, teacher, and prison literacy educator, died Saturday, September 5, 2009, at Teresian House in Albany, New York. She was 87. She taught at Convent of the Sacred Heart, 91st Street, in New York City from 1952 to 1959 and served as cataloguer at Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York, from 1960 to 1965. She also taught at Sacred Heart schools in Princeton, New Jersey, and in Noroton and Greenwich, Connecticut; and she taught latin and religion in Woldingham, England. Sister Cooper also served as reference librarian at Newton College in Boston, Massachusetts. From November 1996 to September 2007, she served as a literacy educator at the Somerset County Jail in New Jersey. She had also been active with the Institute on Sacred Scripture at Misericordia College, Dallas, Pennsylvania, and the Biblical Institute at Trinity College in Burlington, Vermont. Sister Cooper traveled extensively and, in 1984-85, studied at a language school in Sweden. She wrote that she “made many wonderful friends, especially among the Iranians and Pakistani.” She was fluent in French and comfortable with Spanish, Swedish, and Latin. Sister Cooper joined the Religious of the Sacred Heart in 1944 at the Kenwood novitiate in Albany and made her final profession in 1953 at Via Nomentana in Rome. She received her B.Mus. in school music, with a minor in psychology, from Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY. She also earned an M.A. in english from Manhattanville and an M.L.S. in librarianship from Columbia University. She was born in New York City in 1922; her parents, both deceased, were Julian Nelson Cooper and Mary Kathryn Elder Cooper. Sister Cooper is survived by two cousins. The Mass of Christian Burial for Sister Cooper was celebrated on Friday, September 11 at 1:00 PM in the Teresian House Chapel, with interment in the Kenwood Convent Cemetery. Memorial contributions may be made to the Society of the Sacred Heart, 4120 Forest Park Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63108.
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