Former Missouri first lady brings many memories to Cape

In her 87 years, Betty Cooper Hearnes has more stories than most, not to mention a frank humor that was on display when she visited the Cape River Heritage Museum on Saturday morning.

"Now that he's told you how old I am," she said after being introduced, "I'll tell you it's a lie."

Although Hearnes is a former first lady of the state of Missouri and was later a legislator in her own right, her museum talk more was focused on her more-personal memories.

She told stories about growing up in Charleston, Missouri, without much material wealth and in a family of 10.

"There was no structure to it," she said.

But her father, Allen Cooper, a Baptist preacher, refused to let his children shy from a challenge.

"We were never allowed to say we couldn't do anything," she said, and that pushing awakened in Hearnes -- then Betty Sue Cooper -- an academic appetite that would serve her well.

"We did read a lot," she remembered. "There was nothing else to do, anyway."

When she was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives, fellow representatives such as Jerry Ford -- now a volunteer at the Cape River Heritage Museum -- learned quickly Hearnes was to be taken seriously.

"[Back then], she was the same dynamo that she is now," Ford said. "She hasn't changed. She was very aggressive, in a feminine way, and everybody in Jefferson City respected her for her intellect and her gracious personality."

Ford counted himself lucky to have been on the same Democratic side of the aisle as Hearnes, he said, since "she was a very tough adversary."

According to Hearnes herself, she'd always been so. When a fresh-pressed West Point graduate named Hearnes asked to take her to dinner, her answer was more determined than annoyed, but still blunt.

"I said, 'I'm busy,'" she explained. "And I left."

After all, she was busy with her studies at Baylor University, where she'd recently earned a scholarship to pay what her family couldn't.

But months later, when the Hearnes boy asked again, good manners prevented her from declining a second time. But quicker than it had taken them to decide to date, they decided to wed.

"I liked him," she admitted. "I certainly didn't marry him for his money, anyway."

Her parents were less than pleased.

"[My father] just said, "Betty, that will be a lesson to you,' so I figured that meant yes," she said. "My mother went to bed."

But it worked out for the best. Both went back to school after Warren was discharged from the army. Warren then entered politics, moving from the Missouri House of Representatives to the Missouri Secretary of State's office before running for governor.

"He looked at me one day and said, 'Betty, I'm going to tell you something you don't know. I'm going to be the governor of Missouri,'" she recalled. "And he did. And we were two country hicks in the governor's mansion."

Her husband's inauguration remains one of her most treasured memories, she said. It marked the beginning of eight years of hard, meaningful, fulfilling work. It also was the last full day she would share with her father. Cooper would suffer a stroke the next day and died a short time afterward.

"Some of it was good, some of it was bad. Some of it was fun, some of it was sad," she said of her time in the governor's mansion. "But I can still apply my makeup, so ..."

Beyond her accomplishments and those of her husband's, it's her personality that captured the attention of historian and event organizer Dave Dickey. He's working on a series of interviews with Hearnes to preserve an oral history, delivered with her distinctive charm. Dickey explained he was inspired by Hearnes' museum in Charleston.

"There's so much stuff there, and Betty's put it all together herself," he said. "I think her story is very inspirational, like she said, a country girl and boy from Charleston in Mississippi County can end up being the governor of Missouri.

"I've always loved talking to people who have lived history," he said. "And she has."

tgraef@semissourian.com

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