Whatever you think an 86-year-old should be, Lucille Cooper is not.
She’s independent, free thinking and in her hands, a walker becomes a weapon against such things as fast-closing elevator doors. Add a great sense of humor, a dash of playfulness and a lot of creativity, and you have a not-quite-5-foot-tall giant of a woman.
Her latest project was making holiday banners to hang in the dining room at Oakland’s Home for Jewish Parents.
That included a Chanukah banner with a menorah and iridescent fabric for the flames, a High Holy Day banner with a shofar and Hebrew letters, and a Sukkot banner with fruit hanging from a tree. That one, Cooper thinks, is too patschkied up.
Actually it’s beautiful, but she is an artist after all.
Now she’s working on a banner for Passover. The matzah is already done.
Although Cooper leafs through books on Jewish holidays to spark ideas, the designs on the banners are all originals. Created from what she calls her own “mad mind.” And they are anything but simple. They draw on many of Cooper’s artistic talents. Using a felt backing, Cooper pastes on felt shapes and adds some embroidery, crocheted pieces, string or other materials to create the whole concept.
“I’ve always made things, since I was a child,” she said, adding that her initial creations were doll clothes.
But as an adult, with college degrees in math and psychology, her career had little to do with crafts. She taught high school math in Florida.
When she retired some 26 years ago, Cooper packed her bags, drove her car cross-country and parked it in Berkeley with her son. Then she took off for a solo trip around the world.
Cooper and her husband had always planned to travel. Unfortunately, her husband died years before at the age of 43. After single-handedly raising their two sons, she decided to go ahead with the travel plans she and her husband had hatched years ago.
“There was no reason why I shouldn’t travel for both of us,” she said.
And off she went for two years.
“I took very little luggage,” said Cooper. “My son taught me that.”
She also had several other rules for traveling which made the trip a success. Traveling alone was convenient, she explained. “Just go and don’t wait for anyone.”
Cooper never made hotel reservations in advance, and always stayed at small hotels or pensions.
“If you travel simply, you meet the people of the country and they are warm and friendly,” said Cooper. ” I always met someone who wanted to talk to [me] or be with [me].”
After shooting several rolls of film of the beautiful but stark landscape in Iceland, the first stop on her journey, Cooper learned another valuable lesson: Don’t waste your time taking pictures. There already are professional photos of everything you see, while a non-professional may forget to remove her lens cap.
Cooper had perfect timing on her trip. One two occasions, once in Greece and another in Israel, she left the country just days before the start of a war.
When she finally returned to the United States, Cooper pulled up stakes in Florida and moved to California.
“Why stay in Florida when I love California?” she said. Besides, that’s where her son Richard, then a professor of Islamic studies at U.C. Berkeley, and her two grandchildren lived. Her younger son Tad also lived in California, but was killed in a motorcycle accident while in his early 40s.
Today her granddaughter Katya is a musician living in Tel Aviv. Her grandson Ian is an attorney practicing in Oakland.
About her grandchildren, she has her own ideas.
“I don’t care whether they get married or not, I just want great-grandchildren,” she said.
In some ways, making the banners and living at the Home for Jewish Parents has marked a renewal of Judaism for Cooper.
As a child, she studied Hebrew briefly along with her brother when he was preparing for his bar mitzvah. She learned the alphabet and could read it but didn’t know what the words meant. Ironically, the day after her brother’s bar mitzvah, he decided to be baptized and started going to church.
Although Cooper always celebrated the major Jewish holidays she never considered herself a practicing Jew. But as an academic matter, she was interested in Judaism and took courses about it.
“It intrigued me,” she said. “It’s a beautiful religion.”
Between living at the Home and making banners, Cooper’s knowledge of Judaism has expanded to include the lesser holidays and other Jewish traditions. She feels quite comfortable living in a Jewish community.
“It’s a nice feeling to be in a Jewish facility.”