If you drove down Tenth Street in New Alexandria sometime in the past 10 years, you may have seen a 90-something man blithely striding about his roof, doing repairs. That person is M.D. Cooper, a Belle Haven-area institution who just turned 100. What you may not know is how entwined M.D.’s history is with that of this area, and how influential he was on the lives of so many of its residents.
Meredith Dayton Cooper, known as “M.D.” to many of his friends, was one of the Belle Haven/Belle View area’s original residents. He celebrated his 100th birthday on March 20, at the Mount Vernon Nursing Center, where he currently resides. Family and friends traveled in from all over to attend the party, hosted by Trudy and John Andrews, which featured entertainment by piano player Bobby Lytle and another friend of M.D.’s on guitar. Many reflected on M.D.’s amazing life, which spans almost the entire 20th century, and now into the 21st.
A true Renaissance man, M.D. had careers in real estate investing, running a service station, and as a plumber and plumbing inspector for the City of Alexandria. He also traveled extensively all his life, well into his nineties.
M.D. built his Tudor-style home in the Riverview section of New Alexandria about 1935, where he lived until moving into the Nursing Center. At the time, there were only about 15 houses in all of New Alexandria, including about four or five where the Belle Haven picnic area is now, about eight on Potomac Avenue and three on Belle Haven Road, recalled John Andrews, who has also lived in New Alexandria all his life, and has known M.D. since Andrews was a boy.
In 1943, Cooper bought the gas station at the corner of Belle Haven Road and the George Washington Parkway, which is currently a Texaco. “The service station became the center of neighborhood activity for all of the kids,” said Andrews. “We could go up there and pump a little gas, or change a tire or two, and pick up a quarter or fifty cents — big money for kids in those days,” he said.
Cooper became a sort of surrogate father for many of the boys, and was drafted as an “unconventional” Boy Scout master. “He would take us to see the cowboy movies at the old Ingomar Theatre,” recalled Andrews. “I think it cost a dime to get in, and if a kid couldn’t come up with a dime, Coop always came up with an extra one.”
ONE OF THOSE BOYS, William Posey, became a newspaper editor, and one of his columns was devoted to “Cooper.” Posey described how the boys started making trips to the station, and the “trips became more frequent and the stays became longer. Anytime Cooper got jammed up at the pumps, some of us would go out there and give him a hand. Anytime we did, he would always slip us a dollar or two,” wrote Posey.
“Every once in a while Cooper would close early, load us in his Jeep and take us to an amusement park 30 miles away. He always footed the bill for the rides too, because we never had any money,” recalled Posey.
One day at the station, Cooper said “I’ve got something to show you boys,” and pulled down a ladder from the ceiling. The boys climbed up and couldn’t believe their eyes: “Cooper had put a floor in that attic and there was a card table, chairs, a checker board and other games,” according to Posey.
It was one of many things that M.D. built. He was also known as an inventor and innovator. “He built a large gasoline power mower which all of the kids in the neighborhood wanted to run,” said Andrews. “We were fascinated by that power mower. This was before anything like that had ever been built, about 1936 or 1938. He also welded together a very ingenious little carriage to carry his disabled daughter.”
Cooper also invented and patented a plumbing testing device during his tenure as Chief Plumbing Inspector, said his long-time friend and tenant, Jack Conway. And he wrote and published a quarterly plumber's newsletter, which was distributed nationally.
ASIDE FROM HIS creative talent, M.D. is known for his extensive travels, said Conway. Each year, starting in the 1950's and lasting into the 1990's, M.D. has journeyed somewhere in the world. But his wanderlust first appeared as young as age 16, when, according to his nephew, Mike Hudgins, M.D. bought a model T Ford and drove it across the United States, which in 1923 had very few paved roads.
Born in 1904 in Brevard, N.C., to Urile Augustus (“U.A.”) and Lenora Waters Cooper, M.D. was one of eight brothers and sisters. M.D. moved to Tampa as a teen, from where he made his cross-country trip. He then used an inheritance to buy and sell building lots around Miami Beach, which was in the midst of a historic land boom. Then the Miami land bust occurred and M.D. lost everything, according to Conway. M.D. tells the story of a well-known-today, Miami Beach hotel which was turned into a chicken coop after the land bust, said Conway.
He has been to Europe numerous times, sometimes visiting the grave of his brother whose plane was shot down in World War II. On one such trip, he met his wife Herta, and they conducted a long-distance courtship for a couple of years before Herta married M.D. and moved to Alexandria. “M.D. is a romantic at heart,” said Conway.
His longest trip took him to Australia and New Zealand, flying on a propeller-drive plan, as at that time there were no jet commercial aircraft going to Australia, said Conway. "They had to stop every few thousand miles to refuel, and the trip took three days."
M.D. was no stranger to planes; he owned two airplanes at different times, and used to fly to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware from what used to be the Beacon Air Field.
AT AGE 93, he made a guided tour of the Canadian Rockies and the Pacific Northwest. The following year, he made a guided tour of New Mexico and the American Southwest.
M.D. is also famous for his wit. “He used to joke that he used to drink with George Washington before he and George went off the booze. The wives got on them,” said Conway.
Politically, M.D. has been a Republican since 1936. “The ‘New Deal’ never sat well with M.D, said Conway. One day, Conway came across M.D. working in the heat of a 97-degree day, re-shingling an addition on his house, and suggested M.D. be cautious and wait until it was cooler. “Jack, this is a job that would kill a young man,” M.D. quipped.
Sometimes compared to Gary Cooper, tall, slim and handsome, M.D. has always cut a dashing figure, and still does, at age 100, which he proved by dancing with the ladies at his centennial celebration.
M.D.’s surviving relatives include his niece and nephew, Mike and Elaine Hudgins. Other members of his family are nieces and nephews who live in South Carolina and Georgia.