Jason Cooper

“Jason was the star of our family. He had so many talents that we often wondered if he drained the talent tree when it came to the rest of us. He was a skilled martial artist and loved to see how high he could jump in the air while kicking his feet like Jackie Chan. While in boot camp, he was asked to teach the hand to hand combat training, because he knew more than the instructor. This didn’t award him any brownie points by any means, just made the drill sgt mad! He was also an artist, and was enrolled to go to school for Commercial Design at the time he died. With him being my first child, I didn’t know that not all 5 year old boys draw detail pictures of sports cars until his kindergarten teacher pointed out to me what talent he had. From then on, we enrolled him in every art class that we could. His favorite medium was pencil. He also loved to play roller hockey and had a team together for the Iowa Olympic games, but he passed before they could play. He learned to dance on roller skates long before he took his moves to the dance clubs, and would wow the girls with moves like Usher. He taught hip-hop classes in an old Iraqi plane hanger while in Iraq on Tuesday nights. It was a way to try to keep some normalcy while in a not normal situation. He would also run at the weirdest times. He wasn’t a runner that would train and do long marathons, but he would just pop his head in the door and say, “Hey Mom, I am going to run over to the library for a bit.” Which was 5 miles away! He would run over there check out a couple of books and run back home, like it was nothing. The kid was high energy!!! Born April 16, 1982 as an Aries child, he was on fire and a leader of the pack! He loved to make people laugh, and he was a fierce protector of his younger brother and sister. He had many friends growing up in Des Moines, Iowa and they still talk about him today. Jason was 21 years old when he left to serve in Iraq for a year with the USAR. While there he lost 8 battle buddies, two of which were women. He suffered greatly with survivor guilt and PTSD, and only 3 short months after coming home from Iraq, on July 14, 2005, Jason loss his battle at home. He was 23 years old.”