Serenity Park

Over the years Joe McQuany, a recovering alcoholic, and Theodoshia Cooper, a teetotaler, have shared a common interest in helping people recover from alcoholism.

Theodoshia Cooper is the real deal. When she walks into a room in her three inch heels, heads turn, and people who don’t know her whisper to each other, “who’s that?” Theodoshia is a “somebody,” and when she arrived at Serenity Park on a chilly, brilliantly lit morning in early March, she caused the usual stir. She was there to say a few words about Joe McQuany’s Serenity Home for Women project — a new treatment facility in the making. As Theodoshia, 80, looked down from the outdoor podium at Joe, 76, who was seated in the front row, it was a tender moment and full of meaning for those who knew the background. Forty-four years ago, Cooper was the psychiatric social worker who helped McQuany get sober at Little Rock’s state hospital. And together they helped change the course of treatment for alcoholics in the state, especially for blacks. On one level they made an odd couple. Cooper, a minister’s wife, had never taken a drink in her life and McQuany had been completely enslaved by alcohol. Further more they were miles apart in temperament — Joe quiet and thoughtful, Theodosia, smart and sassy. What they had in common was a strong faith in God and an in tense desire to serve. And they were, and remain, magnetic personalities.

Old friends and collaborators, Joe cQuany and Theodoshia Cooper share a laugh

Old friends and collaborators, Joe cQuany and Theodoshia Cooper share a laugh in the sunroom atSerenity Park while recalling the days when Joe was recovering from alcoholism at the state hospital and she was the psychiatric social worker who helped him recover. They were leaders in integrating AA meetings in the early 1960’s and both are active today in promoting the Serenity Home for Women project.

Theodoshia goes to Yale after attending a symposium on alcoholism at Yale University the summer of 1961 Cooper reported for duty at the state hospital in Little Rock where McQuany, a recovering alcoholic, was one of her cases. What struck Theodosia about Joe was that “He was educated, and he wasn’t angry or defensive like the other black men in the hospital.” It came as no surprise to her, she said, that McQuany would become an internationally known author and teacher of the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. “He was a little too humble at first,” she said, “but he really knew how to work with people.” Cooper, worked side by side with McQuany in his efforts to over come segregation at the state hospital and in AA meeting rooms, and helped him launch Serenity Park treatment center where she also served as a member of the board of directors. Today, Little Rock alone has hundreds of AA meetings and is widely known for its so-called “Little Rock approach plan” of recovery.

The Country Girl
Cooper’s country girl origins and rise to positions of influence and respect in the community is the stuff about which Broadway plays are written — think“ Hello Dolly” and “Auntie Mame.” She’s got charisma. And that’s not all. She’s got a brain. And a heart. And there’s a five-page resumé with all the degrees and a long record of service and caring for others to prove it. Born in Jennie, Arkansas, a tiny southeast Arkansas delta community in1925, Cooper was orphaned at age 4 and went to live with an aunt and grandmother in neighboring Eudora where she was raised as an only child, worked in her aunt’s beauty shop, faithfully attended church and went to the local schools where she excelled. In her high school years, she was class valedictorian, class president, student council member, president of 4-H and also basketball queen. During these years she discovered her aptitude for leadership and motivation as well as compassion for the less fortunate of her classmates. “I always sat with the kids who seemed to be hurting,” she says. As for the boys, she says matter of factly, “I was a flirt. I could get anybody I wanted.” Case closed.

Show biz beckons
During these days she experimented briefly with local show biz, playing and singing with a group of girls whose specialty was imitating the pop singers of the time — the Mills Brothers, the Inkspots and even the Andrews Sisters — a bit of a stretch considering they were white. After her high school graduation she went to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff for her freshman year and then transferred to Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock where she graduated with a BSE degree. During this time she also met and married Jobe Vaughn Cooper, a Baptist minister. She began her career as a science teacher at Eudora High School and in succeeding years her bent toward helping the disadvantaged led her to special education jobs in Jacksonville and Little Rock. When she wasn’t teaching, she took on social work research assignments in the field in St. Louis for the Catholic Board of the Children’s Guardian and the Methodist Settlement House. They took her to some dark places where prostitution, child abuse and drug abuse flourished, and this is where Cooper’s concern for the downtrodden and disadvantaged had begun to focus on alcoholism. During her working years she took courses at a variety of colleges and universities — University of Arkansas special education for the deaf, Eastern Michigan College special education for handicapped children, University of Oklahoma for special studies on poverty and program planning for the disadvantaged. And then came the summer school for alcohol studies at Yale. It was attended by the leading scientists and educators in the field along with lecturer Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous with Dr. Bob Smith, and author of AA’s Big Book and 12-stepprogram.

A concern for alcoholics
Cooper, who had come to believe that alcoholism was a disability and asocial ill of major significance, ate up the course work and became a pro-found believer in the transforming powers of the 12-step program. She returned to Little Rock with a heightened concern for the suffering alcoholics in her home state and there solve to do something about it. When she arrived at the state hospital she found that many of its operations were segregated. For one thing, she was dismayed to find that there was a separate ward for white alcoholics but that black alcoholics and mental patients were thrown together. She put pressure on legislators and other officials to reorganize the state hospital so that all patients, including blacks, would get better treatment. She and Joe also set about promoting the integration of AA meetings and helping blacks start AA meetings of their own. In this she got some help from three white men — Charles Clark, who sponsored Joe for 32 years before he died in1993, Bill White and Neil Verdock —who began a subtle collaboration aimed at turning the meeting for blacks at the state hospital into the state’s first desegregated meeting. It wasn’t that difficult. The three men— simply, and without fanfare — began attending the meeting for blacks. Bingo.

Desegregation
Not everything went that smoothly. A group of blacks in Dumas wanted to start a meeting with the help of Clark in the local Masonic Hall, and in their efforts to assist, Cooper and McQuany, traveling in separate cars, were threatened with arrest by state troopers. Polite but determined, the two pilgrims eventually prevailed. It took courage. “I can talk, and I’m not afraid of anybody,” Cooper says today, and in her full regalia, including those three inch heels, she still has the advantage, even at a very active 80 years, of being very attractive.

As they talked about the early 1960’s and the integration of AA meetings, Theodoshia, who has both total recall and the desire to verbalize it, frequently patted Joe’s hand in appreciation of his gentle forbearance.

The first black meeting.
The two founded the first black meeting at Wesley Chapel across from Philander Smith college and in the mid-’60s Joe started attending some of Little Rock’s white meetings. After all these years, Cooper, who learned the 12-Steps at Joe’s quiet insistence, remains a devoted supporter of AA which she says, “is as close to church work as you can get.” Does she go to meetings? Nope, she says, “They won’t let me talk.” Cooper, who retired in 1987 as administrator, Division of Rehabilitation Services/Department of Human ser-vices, may have slowed a step or two, but her zeal for service remains undiminished. She serves on many boards and helps with many causes. Her latest is to help raise money to build the planned woman’s treatment facility at Serenity Park. She plans to get in touch with Oprah about it. Oprah will have her hands full.