Thom's Opening Speech on Johnny's Behalf

Good morning. I’m Tom Cooper, one of the nine Cooper kids who grew up across the street from Johnny. I apologize for my voice. I just got over a bad cold, and trying to hold back tears doesn’t help at all. My family asked me to speak for them today, some because they couldn’t be here, and some because they simply would not be able to get all the way through what has to be said. It might sound strange, the nine of us grieving so deeply for a man who used to live across the street, but I can tell you that every one of us, in Johnny’s death, has lost a loving brother and a close friend. I hardly know what to say. I was talking to Laurie the other night, and she put it best. She said she felt “hollowed out” by Johnny’s death.  It’s just impossible to believe that Johnny isn’t here anymore. He was so full of life, and so aware of life, that it’s impossible to grasp, yet, that he’s really gone. Johnny wasn’t just alive; he was like a force of Nature. I know, because I’m one of the many of us here that had the joy and the honor to have known Johnny for almost all of his life. In 1968, my family moved into the house across the street from the Cameron’s, on 2nd Street, in Lanham. When we moved in, it was just my parents and four boys. Within a few years, we had seven boys and two girls. Johnny’s dad used to swear there was a Cooper kid everywhere he looked – Laurie said he even looked in the kitchen cupboards and the sugar bowl, saying he was bound to find one of us there. And if we weren’t at the Cameron’s, then you could be sure that Johnny was at our house. We were in dire need of supervision.

Like I said, my family is still in shock, and can barely put in words everything we need to say about Johnny. So mostly, we’ve been calling each other up on the phone, or emailing, and remembering the trouble we all used to get into with Johnny, or the crazy ideas he would have. All of them somehow involved a Cooper boy as witness, or accomplice, or victim. Anyone who knew Johnny when he was young will always remember the constant, mischievous havoc of practical joking and scheming that surrounded the boy. As he grew up, Johnny developed an absolutely chaotic, and completely original, sense of humor. It was impossible not to
get caught up in it. He would do anything to entertain us, inventing the most insane scenarios to amuse us, or to shock perfectly innocent passers-by. With my brother John’s help, Johnny once faked his own hanging in front of his house, causing the next two cars to swerve off the road. Elated, and knowing it was great entertainment for John, he did it again. The next car on the road was driven by his dad. So Johnny didn’t do THAT anymore. Instead, he waited until cars were passing the house, and fell off the fence backwards at just the right time. Or he would lie on the side of the road with his legs covered with fake blood. Or he’d have us all stage a fight near the road, punching and kicking him, until drivers screeched to a stop to get out and help.

He created characters by the dozen, and would play the different parts until you had to laugh. He wouldn’t stop until you did. He would create and discard characters, and revisit them out of the blue a week or even years later. He would suddenly no longer be Johnny Cameron, but Rabble Rabble, or The Faggy Mantis, or one of a hundred others. The other day, my brother- in- law, Dave King, offered me some roasted pumpkin seeds while we were driving somewhere. As he said, “pumpkinseed?”, I instinctively covered up my face. When Dave asked what the Hell my problem was, I had to explain that Pumpkinseed was one of Johnny’s recurring, alter egos (my brother John didn't want me to say violent). Fortunately, Dave knew about Johnny already.

All of the kids in our neighborhood were close. We called ourselves the second street gang, I guess because we just had so many kids on one street. There was never a shortage of kids to play any sport, or fight with sticks, or “dirt clogs”, or snowballs, or BB guns, or bottle rockets. Eddie Dowel’s yard, and ours, and the Camerons, along with a few others, looked like a war zone. Johnny’s dad would try to grow some grass in his yard every few years, and then just give up. Johnny and Karl would create new games or invent implements of war which seemed to absorb all of our energies for weeks at a time. I remember that Johnny came up with a system to use bicycle inner tubes like a ballista, shooting rocks, M-80’s, and even a few bottles well over a hundred yards. Somehow, with a few close calls, we all
ended up with all of our fingers and eyes intact.

By the time I got to junior high school, we had outgrown most of the earlier jokes and games, but Johnny still maintained the same chaotic, physical sense of humor, and a seemingly pathological need to entertain those around him. We were central to most of his schemes, so I think it was a huge shock when our family moved away. There would be no more raids on the Bible College, no trips to Indian Rock, no pickup football. No roaming around at four in the morning, or falling out of trees. But Johnny stayed in touch.

At the “new house” in Glenn Dale, Johnny was still a regular visitor. He developed stronger friendships with each of the Cooper kids, and with our father and mother. But he never stopped laughing at us, or at himself, or even at his own family. Nothing was off-limits. Each of us  knew Johnny from a different perspective. My youngest brother, Frank, says that when Johnny showed up in Glenn Dale he knew it would be an exciting day.  Johnny would bring video games, play them one time, and then leave the game for Frank. But with me, at least, talk usually turned to remembering the old times on 2nd street. Johnny was barely a teenager before he had the worst case of nostalgia I’ve ever seen. When we weren't reminiscing, we would talk about his art, or books (almost invariably the Lord of the Rings)
and he would laugh at me and whatever I was up to. Once, when he was painting a mural in a restaurant in College Park, he let me park my motorcycle inside out of the rain, while I watched him work. I still remember the little band of extremely violent apes he painted in one of the backgrounds. Later on, I could never find the apes -- I have a feeling that he painted them in just for my visit.

Johnny was loyal, and caring, honest, and generous. And he had a spark that most people just don't. I hope you’ll pardon me for saying it here, but there are a hell of a lot of people who should have died before Johnny. For the Cooper kids, he wasn't just a friend; he was a little brother to half of us, and a big brother to the rest. His sister Laurie got to spend a lot of time with Johnny in the last three years or so, and she says that we always came up in conversation. When he applied for a new
apartment just last week, his emergency contact was my Dad, at our "new house" in Glenn Dale. All of us knew how much Johnny loved our whole family. And there's no doubt he knew how much we loved him. Thirty-seven years was just not enough time. He died too damned soon, and with him he took the nine year old, the twelve year old, the eighteen year old, and the twenty-nine year old that I'll always remember. Along with Rabble Rabble, the Faggy Mantis,and Pumpkinseed.
I will miss them all.