Coy Mae Hines Ward Cooper: Going Where No Bossier Woman Had Gone Before

 Coy Mae Hines Ward Cooper, local businesswoman and trail-blazing civic leader, is this week’s Bossier woman to highlight for this last week of March, Women’s History Month. She was born in Mooringsport, La. on April 3, 1924 and passed away on February 27, 2022 as a resident of the Bloom of Bossier City. In fact, it was the residents of the Bloom, where I present a monthly local history program, who told me about Mrs. Cooper, and that I must look into and present her history. By about the third of dozens of newspaper articles I found about her, and her detailed obituary in the Bossier Press Tribune, I was absolutely convinced they were right.

Coy Mae Hines and her family followed the oil boom, settling in Welch, Louisiana, where she graduated from high school at age 16. She worked at a café in Welch workers (Jefferson Davis Parish) popular with oilfield workers. It was just a matter of a few months before she was running the café. She also met and married a petroleum engineer, John Ward.

After the birth of her second son John, she went to work as a lab assistant at the Arkansas Fuel Oil Company in Bossier City, LA. at the “Grease Plant.” Then the correspondent for the “Bossier City Grease Plant” in “The Planters Press” newspaper wrote, “It’s Private Ward now for Coy Mae Ward, former Grease Plant employee, who recently joined the Women’s Army Corps. She is stationed at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga. for six weeks basic training. So, it’s time to wish another, good luck on these army careers.“ Coy was assigned to the medical unit at the Harmon General Hospital in Longview, TX. She fulfilled a very dire wartime need for medical technicians.

Upon leaving the service, she took a job as a fiscal accountant for the Veterans Administration in Shreveport. She and John Ward divorced and she later married George Cooper, superintendent of the Arkansas Fuel Oil Company, in 1946. They were married for fifty years before his death. Coy and George bought one hundred acres northeast of I-220 and Stockwell Road on what is now Coy Road. They leased another three hundred acres and raised cattle and their sons on the ranch.

George continued to work the ranch. Coy also worked as office manager and accountant for Shreveport Sash and Door Company then became a part-owner. Later, she, Bruce and Donny Logan, and Nancy Barnett formed Builders Millwork. After a few years, they purchased and operated Bossier City’s Bolinger Millwork and Supply Company. She also became partners in the J.R. Wright Construction Company.

Coy became involved in parish politics in 1981 when she was nominated as the first woman to serve on the Bossier Parish Levee Board by Louisiana State Representative, the late Walter Bigby, and appointed by the late Governor Edwin Edwards. Coy learned all she could about the levee system, walking essentially every inch of them. And, owning property on Stockwell Rd area for 22 years at the time, “I can tell you quite a bit about water”, she said to the “Bossier Press Tribune” in August, 1998. That area flooded in 1997 nearly to the point of evacuation.

Coy Cooper also became the first woman on a local labor board, an area economic development board and the first woman on the Red River Waterway Commission. She served as Treasurer and Financial Officer and was first only woman chairman of the Board of Directors of the Greater Bossier Economic Development Foundation. She was elected to the Bossier City Council as Member at Large in 1997, and worked to bring to fruition the following projects: the CenturyLink Center (now Brookshires Grocery Arena); the Louisiana Boardwalk; the Benton Road overpass; the renovation of Old Bossier; the sale of Bossier Medical Center; the Viking Drive extension; and the Arthur Teague Parkway extension.

She drew a standing ovation when she stepped down from the Bossier City Council in 2001 after her last meeting as councilwoman.

Despite all her “firsts” as a woman, Coy made it known in biographical articles that she was “not a woman’s libber.” When she won the ATHENA award for local businesswomen at the age of 70 in 1994, she said about her 45 years in the building supply business, “I’ve lived in a man’s world since I was 25 years old. I feel any woman can make a niche in a man’s world. You’ve got to work hard.” She told the “Shreveport Journal” in October, 1979, “I’ve always been aggressive and outspoken. I felt like if I can’t hold my own in a man‘s world then I shouldn’t be there.”

Despite not claiming the title of Woman’s Libber, there’s no doubt that right here in Bossier, Ms. Cooper put a woman’s face, and sharp mind, in places where they’d not been seen before, and helped to be sure that there were more women to follow in places where important decisions on the future of Bossier were made. I’m sure by now you can see why the friends Mrs. Cooper left behind wanted her legacy to be known.

If you have stories or photographs of some of the area’s civic-minded women, or of Bossier women’s “firsts” we’d love to see or hear them, and perhaps make copies for our collection, with your permission. If you would like to have our “Women Who Made a Difference in Bossier Parish” program, which includes Coy Cooper (in Part 2) or any of our other programs presented to your group, please contact us, as well. We are located at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA and are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok. 

Image: Photograph of the winner of the Chamber Commercial Beautification Award for the month of October 1980, Wright Cooper Plaza, 707 Benton Road, Bossier City, LA.  (L to R) Coy Cooper, Randy Wright, Carolyn Tauzin-Chamber Representative, Graham Rogers-Chamber President.

Article by: Pam Carlisle