Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? Read Free

club in suburban Baltimore, while also working private parties at posh homes.
    Sam Cooper was an orderly man who liked everything to be just so at home and at work, a trait he passed on to his grandson. When he came home, the Cooper household had to be neat and clean or there would be hell to pay because Sam had a terrible temper. He never had trouble finding work, which was a good thing because he quit several jobs in fits of pique. His hair-trigger temper apparently had an effect on his grandson, whose own outbursts became legendary.
    Sam Cooper would often bring home all kinds of delicious leftovers from work, including frogs’ legs, which the children hated, lobster newburg, Smithfield ham, turkey, marvelous desserts, and even champagne, which the children were allowed to have in small portions. Reginald Lewis retained a fondness for quality champagne all his life.
    Because of his work, Sam Cooper would not get home until long after the children had gone to bed. To make up for that, he would rise early to cook everyone a big breakfast of eggs, bacon, hot cakes, and hash-brown potatoes.
    He would set the table with linen tablecloth and napkins, flatware, and glassware and then he would serve the children as though they were guests in a fine restaurant and he was their waiter.
    Despite his initial grumbling, Sam Cooper adored his grandson. “The first time my mother and Carolyn walked in the house with that boy, tears came to daddy’s eyes and from that point on, Reggie was daddy’s baby,” says James, one of Cooper’s sons.
    In fact, James remembers his father taking Lewis to the Belvedere Hotel, and, with a white towel draped over his left arm, escorting him to a dining room table and serving him lunch, which in Reginald’s case usually consisted of a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup.
    Sue Cooper was a warm, loving, deeply spiritual individual who was also a no-nonsense taskmaster. In addition to raising eight children of her own and two of her sisters’s children, she cleaned other people’s houses.
    She made sure that each child had a job to do, with the youngest children doing the dusting and the older ones washing dishes, scrubbing floors, and helping with the ironing.
    Next door to the Cooper house was a vacant lot that over time became filled with trash and broken glass. Sue and the children cleaned it up and planted flowers of all kinds. She set aside an open space in the middle of the lot where she and the children could have picnics and play.
    Neither Sam nor Sue Cooper had gone beyond the eighth grade in school but, as one of their daughters put it, “Both had PhDs in common sense.” Lewis learned a great deal from his grandparents—how to conduct himself with people from different backgrounds and races, including white people. He noticed that when his grandparents talked to whites, they did so with head erect and gaze unwavering. Sam Cooper emphasized that his children and grandson should always be courteous in their dealings with whites, but never servile.
    “Be whatever the situation calls for and if you need to use them, use them. And after you’ve gotten what you want and where you want to go, then you proceed on,” one of Sam’s daughters, Lewis’s Aunt Charlotte, recalls her father saying.
    I feel very good about my base values, which I think is so important that we instill in our young people and children. On this note I think of my grandparents, even more than my mother. My mother was active, having a lot of other children and dealing with all that entails. But my grandparents, I think, had a wonderful facility for programming young people. And being able to convince you that you were someone special, that you had something to bring or something to contribute, too.
    I carried that with me a long way. It’s been extremely important to me.
    Thanks to the Cooper family, I never had a fear of white people. And I think my grandmother always emphasized, “Don’t be afraid of them. Be