Reading Cooper's writings as a teenager had a powerful effect upon me, and I came to regard him as a second father, probably more influential to me than my real father. When he died it felt like losing my father all over again. Two years later the loss still hurts. I was fortunate to have taken two shooting classes from him in his late seventies and gotten a slight taste of him in person. His body was about shot but his mind was sharp as a tack. Not a man to trifle with.
If you have not read Cooper's Commentaries on the internet, or his many books, you owe it to yourself to read them ALL. It may plant seeds in your mind that will someday bear magnificent and rewarding fruit. Especially in these trying times.
Cooper was a brilliant and complex man whose achievements and contributions in not only the firearms field but others are sorely under-appreciated and, sadly, widely unknown. Student, teacher, seeker of truth, warrior, adventurer, explorer, philosopher, historian, connoisseur of excellence, hunter, 'shottist', race car driver, defender of liberty...We of his fans and the 'Orange Gunsite family' know, and are richer for it. As are many who benefitted from his teachings without even knowing it.
If Cooper could interrupt his teaching John Moses Browning the Modern Technique on the 'big range in the sky' (with Browning's favorite pistol invention of course) and say one thing from the grave it would be:
"Stand up as men and continue the fight!"
Well done Marine, God Bless, Semper Fidelis and Rest in Peace. (Smart salute, fading Taps, something in my eye...)