All his life, Cooper Sr., 58, strived to be a father figure for his son, Michael, his son’s friends and many of his church members, but he knew only a few details about his own father. His name was Robert Hamlett, of Nashville, Tenn. He was a 19-year-old stationed at Lockbourne Air Force Base in Columbus in 1951 when he met Cooper Sr.’s mother, Olivia Wilson.
Hamlett was transferred away from Lockbourne before Olivia discovered she was pregnant. She never got the chance to tell him he was the father. This being 1951, she couldn’t Google him or look him up on Facebook. There wasn’t an easy way to find him. She never did.
Until April 27, Cooper Sr. couldn’t even be sure if Hamlett was still alive. He didn’t know Hamlett’s Air Force career had taken him away from Columbus to Michigan, then Wyoming and Korea. He didn’t know Hamlett, 79, now had a huge family in Nashville, with nine living children.
Cooper Sr. didn’t know Hamlett had won multiple Grammy Awards in the 1990s with a gospel group, “The Fairfield Four,” or that Hamlett had a small role as a gravedigger in the 2000 film, “O Brother Where Are Thou?”
Cooper Sr. didn’t know the full story. All he knew is he wouldn’t feel complete until he found his dad.
Seeking dad
Cooper Sr. grew up without a father, but he had plenty of role models. His great-grandparents, Elijah and Minnie Cooper, raised him because his mom was only 17 when she had him. At 15, Cooper moved in with his mom and three sisters.
Cooper graduated from Columbus East High School and then Central State University. He began a radio career while at CSU, working at WBLY in Springfield. He began teaching at South High School in 1973 and spent 15 years at Springfield-Clark County Joint Vocational School.
In 1987, he became a pastor at the Greater Christ Temple Pentecostal Church in Lima. He has been there ever since and became a district elder in 1992.
Around 1996, Cooper Sr. and his wife, Tobi, watched an episode of the “Oprah Winfrey Show.” It featured a private investigator named Joseph Culligan, who had a book, “You, Too, Can Find Anybody.”
It got Cooper Sr. thinking. What if his dad was out there? What if he could find him? What if that imagined scene could become a reality?
So the Coopers paid Culligan to compile a list of phone numbers for about 20 different Robert Hamletts.
Tobi started calling numbers, crossing many names off the list. Then she reached one Robert Hamlett in Nashville.
“When I got to him, there was something about that voice that made me think that’s probably him,” Tobi said. “He sounded like the perfect age.”
Hamlett had just gotten back together with his wife. She was sitting next to him when he answered Tobi’s call.
“I couldn’t say anything,” Hamlett said. “I said, ‘I don’t know nothing about what you’re talking about.’ ”
Tobi left her number anyway. Later Cooper Sr. also called Hamlett. Again, he couldn’t talk. Then months later, while on a tour stop in Columbus, Hamlett called the Coopers. He got no answer. The Coopers didn’t have an answering machine at the time.
The search stalled.
Finding dad
“The Bucket List,” a Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson film about two terminally-ill old men crossing off a list of things to do before they die, didn’t win many awards. It did leave an impression on Michael Cooper Sr.
After seeing it earlier this year, he set a goal of getting back in touch with old friends, mentors and colleagues. It wasn’t long before Cooper Sr. again thought of his father.
On April 26, after Cooper told his wife he wanted to try the next day to find a colleague from his days as a disc jockey, Tobi told him, “You’re going to find your daddy, too.”
The next morning at Springfield High School, a man Cooper Sr. had urged to reconnect with his own father thanked him for motivating him to do so.
“I talked to my father and got things straightened out,” he told Cooper. “You’re going to find your father, too.”
Cooper Sr. didn’t need any more hints. That night, he entered the name, Robert Hamlett, into a search engine on MyLife.com. The same number and Nashville address they had in 1996 popped up again.
Cooper said he wasn’t nervous when he dialed the number. Again, Hamlett answered.
“Hello, how are you?” Cooper Sr. said. “My name is Pastor Michael Cooper. I’m calling from Ohio. I’m looking for my birth father. My mother told me his name is Robert Hamlett, like yours.”
Cooper Sr. relayed the few details he knew about his father. Then he told Hamlett his mom’s name. Hamlett remembered her and then mentioned a few other people Cooper Sr.’s mom Olivia had known.
It didn’t take long for Hamlett to figure it out.
“You know what, I am your daddy,” Hamlett said.
Tobi arrived home while her husband was on the phone with Hamlett.
“I found my father!” an emotional Cooper Sr. shouted.
Not long later, the Coopers’ son, Michael, a standout football and basketball player at Wittenberg, arrived at the house. His mom was about to send him a text message with the news.
As Cooper Sr. learned all about his dad’s musical career and his family, word began to spread around Nashville, too.
“I’m big on family anyway,” said Michael Hamlett, one of Robert’s sons. “When I first heard it, I went on Facebook and looked up Michael Cooper. I sent him a message. He hit me right back.”
Just like that, two families united. Last weekend, they became even closer as they met for the first time, first at the home of Earl and Ivy Brewer, Cooper Sr.’s brother-in-law and sister, in Columbus and then at the Christ Temple Church in Lima.
Cooper Sr.’s long-imagined dream became a reality.
Meeting dad
Hamlett saw Cooper Sr. waiting in the driveway as he arrived in Columbus on May 15. One of Hamlett’s daughters, Jackie Myers, was in the car. She said her dad isn’t so sharp anymore, but he recognized his new son before the car stopped.
“That’s my son,” Hamlett said.
The two embraced for a full minute. The bond was instant.
“It was not like meeting a stranger,” Michael Hamlett said. “It was like meeting your family. It’s easy to say, ‘OK, he’s my daddy.’ But you felt it. He just bridged the gap. We’ve got a family now in Ohio.”
While Cooper Sr. found what he was always looking for, the Hamletts found something, too.
“I didn’t know about him, and to find out he’s such a great guy, it was something else,” Robert Hamlett said.
“He’s a big teddy bear,” Michael Hamlett said. “He’s just a lovable guy. He makes you feel comfortable. He makes you feel welcome.”
The next day, the Coopers, including Cooper Sr.’s mom Olivia, and the Hamletts attended church in Lima. Watching the Hamletts enter the church, Quan Cory, the church’s administrative assistant, said it was like a balloon bursting. All the emotion that had been building for years — especially for the many church members who knew about Cooper Sr.’s search for his dad — spilled out over the congregation.
“I did say to him, not too long after this happened, that he always had this testimony, and he used it in a positive way to encourage people,” Cory said. “After this happened, I told him, ‘You no longer have that testimony. You have a new testimony.’ ”
Robert Hamlett wondered what the church members would think of him, whether they would accuse him of being a bad father.
Olivia silenced those fears by telling the church it wasn’t Robert’s fault. He just didn’t know about his son.
At one point, Cooper Sr. broke down during his sermon. This was the scene he had awaited. Maybe he didn’t envision every detail, or the path he would take to get here. But here it was, the moment most people get on the first day in the delivery room.
After almost 59 years, Cooper Sr. was complete at last.
“I realized I’m looking at my mother and my father sitting in the front of my church,” he said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0351 or djablonski@coxohio.com.
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