Submitted photo | Doug Clements
During his time as a youth football coach in the Warren and Lawrence Townships, Doug Cooper learned pretty quickly that children have a way of being able to tell which adults have their hearts in it.
“Kids can read your body language, and if you act like you don’t want to be somewhere, then they’re not going to want to be there,” Cooper said. “But if you actually, truly want to be there, they will pick up on that and they will run through brick walls for you if they need to.”
For the last three years, Cooper has shown the same enthusiasm as a Whiteland bus driver that he did as a coach — and his passengers could tell the difference. So when Cooper recently found out that he was facing cancer in his neck and throat for a third time, the same Warriors that he’s been driving to and from games became the driving supportive force behind him.
Brayden Roy, a recently graduated basketball and baseball player, got to know Cooper over the past couple of years; when he found out that Cooper’s cancer had returned, he helped rally his former teammates together.
“He asked if me and him could go eat together,” Roy said, “and I invited all of the basketball boys and a few of the baseball guys, so about 15 of us went to Subway. We ate for about an hour, and we kind of broke it down outside. He’s a great guy, so I think it’s the least we could do.”
Born in Fort Hood, Texas, Cooper spent part of his childhood in Indianapolis before spending his high school years in Illinois. He moved back to Indy in 1988 and has lived in Greenwood the last four years.
Because of the relationships he’s built through his job, however, Cooper is 100% Whiteland.
“A lot of good people here,” Cooper said. “As you can see, they rally around each other.”
Cooper’s first run-in with cancer came in 2017, when he had 13 lymph nodes removed from his neck and throat. Nine more were removed last September.
Following that 2022 operation, Cooper wasn’t going to let anybody stop him from making it to Whiteland’s next football game.
“I wasn’t supposed to,” he said, “but when I got out of the hospital with staples in my neck I drove my car to Plainfield so I could show the kids what a Warrior was.”
The football squad had already shown their respect for Cooper heading into that surgery by asking him to lead them out onto the field for the Sept. 16 homecoming game against Perry Meridian (“I actually got goosebumps standing in the tunnel with the seniors,” he said).
A constant and visible presence at Whiteland sporting events — he’s been known to don a blue wig for home basketball games or sit with a cooler full of water bottles while taking in a Saturday baseball doubleheader — Cooper has clearly demonstrated how much he cares about the kids he’s transporting to various school events.
Now, as he readies himself for an Aug. 24 surgery, those kids are showing the same care in return.
“He loves watching us and cheering for us, so a bunch of people are going to rally around him,” said Roy, who plans to meet up with Cooper for another meal prior to this next operation. “I’ve never met somebody that doesn’t like Doug.”
The support from the Whiteland students is helping to provide Cooper with the drive he needs to beat back cancer for the third — and hopefully the last — time.
“Sometimes when you inspire people, they inspire you back,” Cooper said. “Out here, whether it’s a sports thing or choir or band or whatever it is, you inspire kids to go do their best in an event — but they’re inspiring me to do my best in winning the game of life.
“They give me something to look forward to.”
One of the first things that Cooper is looking forward to post-surgery is Whiteland’s home football opener against Kokomo the following evening. And while he knows the doctors will likely frown upon him driving anywhere for at least a little while, he’s also looking forward to getting back behind the steering wheel of a school bus and interacting with students again.
There’s a difference, he says, between those who feel like they have to go to work and those who get to go to work. He considers himself among the lucky few in that latter camp, so he’ll be eager to return to action as soon as he has clearance to do so. Cooper says he took on nearly twice as many extracurricular assignments in 2022-23 as any other driver in the school district, and it doesn’t sound as if he’s planning on slowing down anytime soon.
He just needs to crash through one more barrier first, but with an army of Warriors at his side, he’s ready to take it head-on — just like the young football players he coached years ago did for him.
“Brayden and the boys make me feel like I could run through a brick wall,” Cooper said. “When I’m around them, it just makes me feel like I could conquer the world.”
