William L. Cope
(1919—2002)
Bill Cope – a gentle Friend and gentleman – exemplified the life of someone seeking to be completely submitted to the immediate influence of Christ in the heart. He had a calm and cheerful presence and took a genuine interest in others. Among the most powerful tributes at his memorial service were the testimonies to his loving care as a father, and observation revealed his great concern and affection for his wife Verna. Sadly, the burden of Alzheimer’s disease gradually obscured the Bill Cope all had known and appreciated. Even in the impairment of his wit and wisdom, Bill realized the great love and esteem in which people held him and what a blessing his life was to all who knew him. Many of us will always remember Bill’s soft voice in meeting giving words of love and encouragement that had to be given to him by God.
William Lorin Cope was born on Fifth Month 31, 1919 to William Logan and Rachel (Mott) Cope. Although the son did not have the same name as his father, he was known as William L. Cope, Jr. Bill’s dad grew up in the Sewickley Meeting in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, the last surviving meeting of Redstone Quarterly Meeting. When the meeting was laid down in 1912, William moved to Iowa, where he met and married Rachel Mott at Whittier Meeting (then called Springville) in 1915. They moved to Middleton, Ohio, in 191x, and lived there the remainder of their lives. Rachel died on 2/14/1926, when Bill was only six years old. His father re-married to Celia Pike of Sugar Grove Meeting near Plainfield, Indiana (Western Yearly Meeting Conservative). The Copes were members at Middleton.
As was common in Ohio Yearly Meeting of the time, most of Bill’s schooling came from Friends’ schools. He started in the Middleton Friends primary school, located adjacent to the meeting house. In 1930, the meeting decided to close the school. At the time, the school had ten scholars – all male – and the meeting felt that it was not right to continue the school without female scholars. After attending public schools, Bill was able to attend Friends Boarding School (later Olney), where he graduated in 1937.
In 1938 Bill moved to California. Cyrus Cooper and William Stanley were traveling in the ministry from Middleton to the Wilburite meeting in Pasadena, California. The Pasadena Meeting was organized in 1886 (monthly meeting opened in 1895) by Ohio Friends. It had been transferred to Iowa Yearly Meeting in 1917 as a part of the transfer of Hickory Grove QM. However, the meeting faced difficulties arising from its situation so remote from other Wilburite meetings. Ralph Stanley, son of William Stanley, served as the driver on this cross-country trip, and he agreed to take Bill Cope with them if he would contribute $5 to the trip and assist with the driving. As the trip progressed, however, Ralph did all the driving. When the time came for the two ministers to return to Ohio, a local Friend decided to travel to Ohio with them. Bill chose to remain in Pasadena since the car only had room for four people.
While Bill lived in Pasadena, one of his childhood friends moved there from Columbiana County. Bill met Floyd Hawkins when he was attending public school. They had worked together in summers and rode motorcycles together. Floyd also moved to Pasadena, where he and Bill attended meeting at Pasadena. They met two sisters there, Verna and Mary Heald.
On Fifth Month 30, 1941, Pasadena Meeting had a double wedding. Iowa Yearly Meeting had a long tradition of such double weddings, so this was not something unusual. At the time, Floyd was not a member, so he joined the meeting. Bill married Verna and Floyd married Mary.
Bill’s experience as a conscientious objector actually began in 1940. He took a night course in aircraft riveting and then started working for Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank, California. He worked on the production of commercial aircraft. With the passage of time, Bill noticed that more and more of the aircraft parts he was working on were designed for military use. He was troubled by this and discussed it with co-workers. He later wrote: “I made a decision to quit and had an interview with a supervisor explaining my reasons for leaving. He thought I was ill-advised and foolish to do this and hoped the army would get me.”
Bill had several other kinds of work while living in Pasadena. He worked as a carpenter, a painter, and in an orchard. One of the more interesting jobs he was working in a tuberculosis center run by Dr. William Hearst. Men with the disease lived in small cabins, having been quarantined from their families. The center was called the “Ghost Farm” due to the large number of deaths there.
Bill was first drafted while living in California. The draft was passed in 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The initial legislation exempted men from service who were involved in certain types of jobs such as orcharding and farming. However, the California draft board did not have many young men who asked to be conscientious objectors. Bill had a frustrating experience with the California draft board, and in 1942 he moved with his family to Ohio, where draft boards faced more young men who asked to be CO’s.
The young Cope family settled in Columbiana County. Bill and Verna moved into a two-room shack without heat or electricity. Floyd helped to build a brick addition onto the house in the ensuing year. Bill and Verna attended Ohio Yearly Meeting in 1943, where the Nominating Committee appointed Verna to the Temperance and Public Morals Committee.
Bill was drafted for service in World War II on Tenth Month 20, 1944. He and Floyd had been able to gain deferments from military service through working in orchards, but as the war progressed many exemptions from the draft were repealed. It was difficult for the two young families. Bill and Verna already had a son (Ted) and a second son on the way (Philip). Floyd and Mary had a daughter, Nancy. Mary and Nancy lived with Verna and Ted while the husbands left for a camp for conscientious objectors. The sisters had a hard time meeting their familys’ obligations, but Middleton Friends and the AFSC helped them financially.
Bill and Floyd boarded a bus in Salem, Ohio, on the same day (10/20/1944) to go to the Brig Flats C.O. Camp No. 46 near Elmira, New York. The camp was initially sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, later run by the government. Most of the work at Brig Flats centered around a nursery operation and forest management. The local Friends in the camp organized an independent monthly meeting, and Bill was chosen to serve as their Clerk. The meeting sent an epistle to Ohio Yearly Meeting in 1946 which read:
Dear Friends,
We are very grateful for the encouragement extended us in the ‘letter to Scattered Groups.’ How we do need to acquaint ourselves with God and learn of Him they ways of Eternal Life and Peace. We feel that there is a dearth of deep spiritual fervor, and a need for being stirred to a drawing away from temporal cares unto the foot of the Cross.
Thanking you again for your kind interest, we remain your friends.
Signed on behalf of the meeting, William Cope, Clerk.
Ohio Yearly Meeting’s Peace Committee was concerned about returning CO’s. They appointed a subcommittee to assist them and to help them find work upon their return. The committee was surprised to find that the Lord opened doors so that most of the returning CO’s had little trouble finding work.
Bill became active in Middleton Meeting upon his return from camp. He was appointed Clerk in 1948, replacing Morris Kirk, and served until 1957. One Friend reminisced that he would always remember “being calmed by Bill’s steady voice at business meetings that seemed both poetic and spirit led.” As Clerk, Bill began the Middleton tradition of compiling a brief memorial for all of their members who died rather than a select few.
In 1949, Bill was appointed a representative from Salem QM to Ohio Yearly Meeting. He was appointed to a committee on sojourning membership, which drafted a revision to the discipline which remains substantially intact in the current discipline. Bill was also appointed to the Epistle Committee and the Committee on Juvenile Literature. Verna served on the Epistle Committee for the Women’s Yearly Meeting. This was the last year in which Ohio Yearly Meeting held separate women’s and men’s business meetings.
In the following years, Bill contributed to the work of Ohio Yearly Meeting. In 1955, he was appointed one of the leaders of Junior Yearly Meeting with Mildred Cooper. They organized activities for the 8-14 age group. Their work was easier this year because William Bacon Evans was visiting the yearly meeting from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and helped Bill and Mildred. (Floyd replaced Bill on the committee in 1959.) In 1956, Bill was appointed to the yearly meeting Committee of Testimonies, which started the process of re-writing the 1922 discipline.
Around 1950, Bill took a job working for Barth Farms in Poland, Ohio. The situation was rather conducive to young families. The farm provided housing, a half beef each year, and all the chickens, turkey, milk and potatoes the family needed. The seven years the Copes lived at Barth Farms represented the bulk of Bill’s life not lived in the Middleton area. As his time there progressed, Bill found that he had not been called into farming as an occupation. Although Verna thought that the situation was good for the family, Bill felt that it was time for them to leave. An old friend provided Bill with an excellent opportunity to shift careers.
The United States experienced a post-war boom in the 1940s and 1950s. New housing was being constructed at an incredible rate, and northeastern Ohio was not exempt. Floyd Hawkins became the owner of Hawkins Plumbing and Heating in East Fairfield, and he needed more help. He hired Bill as a journeyman plumber in 1957, and Bill worked there into the 1970s. One of his early projects there was the construction of his own house in 1957. This would be the house where Bill and Verna raised their children Ted, Philip, Paul, and Mary Alice.
Bill Cope wanted his faith to be a part of his daily life. He had a sign in his office which read:
I often think of Jesus’ answer given when he was asked what was the greatest commandment. ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ This seems to me to be the best priority schedule to regulate our living and loving in the here and now which is all we really have. We cannot help but question, how do we fulfill these commands? I believe our sincere effort in this direction is the great part of the working out of our salvation and He will lead and help us as we are sincere in our effort.
Bill was interested in history and genealogy. He was a member of the Columbiana County Genealogical Society and assisted many people in researching their family in the area. He wrote to one cousin that he treasured information about his ancestors who provided “a wonderful heritage for us.” He also collected historic photographs of Friends meeting houses and photographed many other meeting houses on his trips with Verna.
Bill Cope continued his activity among Friends throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, serving on several important committees. Most of his committee appointments showed that the meeting recognized his interest in the spiritual growth of Middleton and the yearly meeting. Bill was recognized as an Elder in 1964.
In the early 1960s, Bill was active on the yearly meeting Temperance and Health Committee. The committee purchased books and literature for public schools and Olney and purchased subscriptions to an anti-smoking periodical named The Quiz Book which was produced by the Ohio Temperance League. The committee sponsored a program by the American Cancer Society on the “harmfulness of alcohol and tobacco” three years before the first major publication appeared on the health risks from tobacco. As the convenor of the committee, Bill wrote the following interesting paragraph in the committee’s report to Ohio Yearly Meeting in 1963:
We are troubled by the alarming increase in the use of alcoholic liquors all across the nation and especially among the younger people. We want to urge all to follow Divine leading in speaking out diligently against this curse. Also we would like to urge all who are concerned, to work toward the elimination of liquor and tobacco advertising, especially the type repeated so often on television and radio that is very deceiving, making it appear correct and proper to use these harmful products.
In 1968, Bill became involved in the General Meeting of Conservative Friends. This gathering was first held in 1965 on a concern by Edmond Goerke. A second general meeting was held in 1969 at Middleton, which Bill helped to organize. The meeting decided to rotate the general meeting among the three remaining Conservative yearly meetings: North Carolina in 1974 and Iowa in 1978. Bill kept an extensive folder on correspondence relating to the organization of the general meetings and the minutes approved at each. The general meeting was renamed the General Gathering in the early 1990s.
Several times in the years 1969 to 1973, Bill was chosen to write the report of the Spiritual Life and Ministry Committee to yearly meeting. His reports included several spiritual nuggets worthy of being repeated here:
[1969] Let us seek diligently to learn the art of waiting upon God for we constantly need this renewal of strength that we may walk hand in hand with our God courageously, joyfully, victoriously, in this day when there is so much unrest, suspicion, and misunderstanding among the children of the Creator.
Our committee meetings continue to be times of exciting adventure as we share in a spirit of worship the deeper things pertaining to the Abundant Life. Our interest and concern for the Spiritual Life and Ministry in our meetings does not abate and we observe with joy and thanksgiving the manifestations of growth in the life of the Spirit. May we one and all yield to the tender leadings and intimations in our innermost beings, open the doors of our hearts wide that the Christ who knocks so gently may come in and abide with us. It is our fond hope and dream that there may be a resurgence of the power of God among us, an outpouring of His Holy Spirit. It seems to be already in evidence and so we desire and urge each one to be faithful to the voice of the Good Shepherd. The meeting is not complete without the contribution of each member, and the Master has given each of us talents to use and develop, so we would encourage each one to be diligent in using the abilities He has given whether they be small or greater so that His plan and work may be advanced, and the Life and Power amongst us may be strong and vigorous.
[1971] The aim and goal of the committee is to entreat and encourage one and all to get on with this journey, this quest, to find that indeed our real destiny is to find and be changed into the likeness of the living Christ. In the words of the statement of purpose of the committee written last year, our work remains the same: to encourage renewed commitment to deeper spiritual living in our meetings and in our homes initially by our own renewed dedication to our Savior and Lord, seeking strength and direction to serve Him in the way of His calling.
[1972] As we have endeavored to serve our appointment the past year, we have been encouraged, stimulated, and refreshed by the evidence we have encountered of spiritual life and growth, by the hungering and thirsting for more of the things God has for us as we commit more of our lives to Him. It is thrilling to watch as older and younger find that a living, immediate relationship with Christ does bring a peace, a joyous fulfillment to life. This brings a radiance to the countenance that is beautiful. Praises be to the name of the Lord!
Selection of a message in Middleton Meeting:
My mind has been drawn to the word Gospel. Gospel – Good News. First there is bad news. The Scriptures tell us “all have sinned,” that we are under the bondage of sin and death, and that this affliction is terminal. What a bleak situation! Now the good news – our best friend, Jesus, the Son of God, has paid our ransom by giving His life, His life blood to set us free of this bondage. However it is not automatic – it remains for us to respond. When we hear His knock at our heart’s door and feel the vibrations then we may open to door and invite Him in to stay.
Clerk of Ohio Yearly Meeting for 10 years.
Bill was particularly favored as a Clerk. Answer to the Second Query (Middleton MM):
Each of us needs to be responsible for our own spiritual growth, which will in turn strengthen the entire meeting. Our speaking, prompted by the Holy Spirit, gives us food for thought, often a new appreciation for certain scriptures, and helps us grow in faith and obedience. Several things build us up in the faith; among them are Bible reading and answers to prayer. Friends principles involve a process of increasing obedience to the inward Guide and causing us to demonstrate these principles of worship. We uphold Friends way of worship by continuing to take part in it. When someone does not seem to understand these basic principles due care is taken to explain our ways. The scriptures tell us to stir up the gifts. We seed to ask what our gifts are and use them for God’s glory.
Last minute of Ohio Yearly Meeting, 1984:
During this yearly meeting week we have sensed the Presence in the midst, the covering and guidance of God’s Holy Spirit in times of worship. As we sought to care for the business, and in our fellowship together, we are indeed grateful for His loving kindness and tender mercies as we have witnessed His ministrations among us. We are appreciative of the presence of visitors who have come from near and far, to share with us this experience. As we go our separate ways, may we all carry with us fresh inspiration and spiritual renewal that will enable us to be more able peace makers, working from an inner peace that the Price of Peace does give us. We look toward meeting again in this place next year should it be within our Heavenly Father’s will. We now adjourn with thanksgiving and praise for the blessings of the week.
In the late 1980s, Bill and Verna participated in the early stages of the renewal of Chesterfield Meeting. In 1985, John Schofield mentioned at yearly meeting that it might be time to lay down Chesterfield. Most of the members were nonresident other than John and his wife Dorothy, and they were preparing to move to the Walton Home. Randy and Martha Giffen from Stillwater began to travel to Chesterfield to worship with the small meeting. Bill and Verna drove down from Columbiana County several times to worship with Chesterfield. One incentive for them to make the three-hour drive was that daughter Mary Alice, who lived in Salem WV decided to transfer her membership to Chesterfield. Mary Alice tried to make the two-hour trip to Chesterfield at least once a month.
In 1988, the Giffens convinced Chesterfield Friends that they should renovate the meeting house. It was a massive undertaking. Chesterfield Meeting House, constructed in 1836 and the oldest meeting house in Ohio Yearly Meeting, was one of a handful of Conservative Friends meeting houses without indoor plumbing. Bill undertook the task of installing a new heating system, which was placed in the attic. Bill and Verna would stay over to worship with Friends on First Days. A member at Chesterfield said that Bill and Verna
were agents who introduced us to a deeper worship hour and acquainted us with the ministry typical of Wilburite Quakerism. When Bill was present at Chesterfield, it always seemed to me we experienced a depth to the silence not present previously. His quiet manner of contributing to discussion or in answering our many questions displayed a willingness to share what he had experienced spiritually.
During these years, Bill also served as a traveling companion for Thomas Cooper, who received a minute to perform home visits within Middleton Monthly Meeting and elsewhere as the Lord granted him direction. Thomas and Bill performed fourteen such visits, sometimes accompanied by their wives. After having an opportunity with the family, those gathered would have a spiritual discussion. In addition to meeting with most of the families at Middleton, Thomas and Bill visited the Walton Home and also the Raven Rocks community south of Barnesville (where Bill’s son Ted lived).
In 1994, Bill and Verna wrote to Phil Irwin, the Head of School at Olney, and offered to serve as Friends in Residence. The Copes were accepted and became only the second people to serve as Friends in Residence. They moved into the building named Sunnyside and lived there from 1994 to 1996. Although they worked for free the first year, the School paid them $100 a month during their second year. Bill and Verna went to all meals with the students. They got up each morning at seven to be ready for morning collection. Bill would have a conference with Vic Peacock while Verna did the kitchen laundry. Bill did not participate in faculty meetings at Olney, since he felt that he was not sent there to discipline the students.
While at Olney, Bill and Verna attended meeting at Stillwater. It was there that Verna first noticed that Bill had Alzheimer’s disease. Bill was often led to quote Psalm 23 in worship, and one day he had trouble remembering it correctly.
As the years progressed, his memory gradually faded. Bill, always the gentleman, recognized faces and realized that he had forgotten many names. His warm smile and greeting sufficed for those who knew his challenges. One First Day while visiting Chesterfield, Bill spoke up during the discussion and said, “I think somewhere in the Bible it says the Lord is my shepherd.” It was a touching moment for those who knew the hardship Bill and Verna faced on a daily basis.
In the late 1990s, Verna was unable to care for Bill, and the family moved him into an Alzheimer’s Center in Columbiana. Bill died there on Seventh Month 18, 2002.