Murder rates among black males were going down—repeat, down—during the much-lamented 1950s, while [they] went up after the much-celebrated 1960s, reaching levels more than double what they had been before. Most black children were raised in two-parent families prior to the 1960s. But today the great majority of black children are raised in one-parent families.
Such trends are not unique to blacks, nor even to the United States. The welfare state has led to remarkably similar trends among the white underclass in England over the same period.… You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization—including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility, and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain—without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.
Words of Wisdom from Larry Cooper
“It took me so many years to realize how important your character is. . . . I’m not going to ever let it slip again.”
Larry Cooper was one of the statistics, exhibit A in this national tragedy. But today he’s well on his way to a life of honor and redemption. Perhaps the jury on him is still out, but I’m betting he is a hero in the making. Symbolic of his determination to live a repaired life, he advised me firmly when he reviewed this chapter: “Lawrence Cooper is dead. I’m Larry Cooper now.” So that’s the last time in the chapter you will see “Lawrence.”
“A Different Man”
Growing up in Savannah in the 1970s and ’80s, Larry faced the challenges posed by a broken family.
“My dad had thirty-three kids with six or seven women,” he informed me over breakfast when we met in February 2016. “Mom and Dad separated early, so Dad just wasn’t around. I saw him maybe twice a year.”
As a teenager, Larry started skipping school, stealing, smoking marijuana, and then doing cocaine. “I dropped out of school when I was sixteen and it broke my mama’s heart,” he said. His mother implored him to find employment, so he took a landscaping job. It lasted only a week before he was in the streets again.
Hanging out with the wrong people, trapped in a vicious circle of using drugs and stealing to afford more—and with only a brokenhearted mother at home to offer any hope for a better life—Larry was headed for destruction. His poor choices caught up with him two years later with a ten-year sentence for armed robbery. Things would get much worse before they got better.
Bad behavior, including aggravated assault, earned Larry additional prison time—a grand total of twenty-eight years. He went in at age eighteen and emerged at forty-seven. It will be another decade before he can say he has been a free man for as long as he wasn’t.
“Over the years while behind bars,” Larry told me, “I thought more and more about what my mama had told me. She said this would happen if I didn’t straighten up. She prayed hard for me, all the time. She visited me as much as she could. I still remember how bad I felt when she once came to see me but was turned away because I was ‘in the hole’ for bad things I had done. But she never gave up on me.”
I asked Larry what the low point of his time in prison was. I expected it might have been a run-in with a guard or another inmate, an ugly incident of short duration. His answer: “Seven years in solitary confinement.”
“Seven years?!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, and every day it was the same: one hour out in the yard, fifteen minutes in the shower, and then twenty-two hours and forty-five minutes in solitary. At first I was in despair. But then I started reading and then writing to folks, exercising in my cell and thinking hard about what had happened to me and what was going on in my life. It took those long hours by myself to make me come to my senses and start feeling bad about the people I stole from, all the friends and family I had hurt. Things mama told me finally started to have an effect on me.”
Larry’s mother arranged his baptism when he was a child, but he never made time to read more than a few words of the Bible—or anything else, for that matter. A prison chaplain introduced him to a Bible study course conducted by mail. Larry enrolled and completed it.
“That’s when my life really began to change,” he told me. “Ever since that course, I’ve been a different man. I’ve settled down. I use my brain now. I’m no longer the man I used to be.”
Freedom
Larry’s personal and spiritual recovery were well under way before I had ever heard of him. His reading had brought him into contact with ideas of political and economic liberty. He wrote my former place of employment in Michigan, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, asking for more information. My old colleagues there forwarded his letter on to me at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), and that began a correspondence that now fills two shoeboxes on a shelf in my home office.
Never before had I contemplated forming a friendship with a man in prison. I wouldn’t have known how to begin. If Larry hadn’t taken the initiative to contact me, a relationship would never have developed. I now count it as a great blessing in my life.
Larry was much more diligent in writing than I was, I confess with some remorse. “I had more time on my hands than you did,” he jokes.
But I’m pleased to have helped deepen his understanding of liberty by sending him many books and articles.
“Were there any particular things I sent you that made a big impact?” I asked.
Without skipping a beat, he replied, “Yes. One was your book A Republic—If We Can Keep It, and the other was What It Means to Be a Libertarian by Charles Murray.” The reader will excuse me, I hope, if I report this with a smile and considerable pride.
Larry and I corresponded but never spoke by phone until after his release. I was looking forward to the day when I could finally drive down to Savannah to spend time with him. Until we met, I didn’t even know what he looked like, but we embraced as if we were brothers.
We dined at the Bonefish Grill on Abercorn Street, then went to see the film Race, about Olympic hero Jesse Owens (see chapter 24). The next morning we had breakfast, where I recorded the interview on which this chapter is based. After the interview we visited the public library on Bull Street so I could show Larry how to create his first e-mail account.
I learned much from Larry during our time together. For example, he opposes the drug war from a vantage point I have never experienced—from inside prison walls, where, he said, “drugs are everywhere.” I asked him where they come from.
“All sorts of ways and places,” he said. “Guys out on work detail get ’em. People throw ’em over the prison gate. Guards and officers bring ’em in.”
Larry’s views on current issues are interesting, but his personal transformation is, to me at least, positively captivating. The sad part of it is that Larry’s mother, one of the few anchors in his life, died just three months before he earned his freedom.
“At first I couldn’t believe it,” he recalled. “She was living for the day I would get out, which was the day after Thanksgiving, 2015. It really hit me at Christmas. At my first Christmas dinner as a free man in twenty-eight years, family and old friends got together. Everybody was there but mama. It took me so many years to realize how important your character is. Thanks to mama and my faith, I’m not going to ever let it slip again.”
For a few months after his release, the Salvation Army in Savannah provided Larry with a place to live and a church to attend on Sundays. He started putting his new life together working two jobs, one with a prestigious catering service and the other with a local staffing firm that placed him in short-term stints at manual labor. He doesn’t want welfare.
“I try to earn every penny I get,” he told me proudly. He’s both optimistic and excited about his future. He would love to start a new family.
“I want to prove to myself that I can be a good independent man and make amends for what I did. I take one day at a time, but my spirits are real good.”
After all Larry has been through and with freedom so new to him, I suppose there’s a chance of a relapse. Surel
y he will encounter occasional bumps in the road. I hope I’ve encouraged him and can continue to do so.
Hero in the Making
There are many lessons here: Strong families and good parenting can make all the difference in the world. Building character for navigating life’s pitfalls is a priceless undertaking. Don’t underestimate the value of a mother who never gives up on a wayward son. Through an inner transformation, in this case facilitated by a spiritual renewal, even the seemingly incorrigible can turn his or her life around. Never miss an opportunity to encourage someone who is clearly trying to do the right thing.
I intend to stay in touch with Larry Cooper. I’ll watch his progress and assist with it if and when I can. He has already taught me a valuable truth: that heroes aren’t always the ones who make the headlines or the history books. They may just be on the other side of a wall.
Lessons from Larry Cooper
Remember that It’s never too late to build character: Larry Cooper, who has spent more time in prison than as a free man, says that it took him “so many years to realize how important your character is.” But once he realized it, he learned from his mistakes and began building himself into a person of character. Anyone—even the seemingly incorrigible man—can turn his life around.
Encourage someone who is trying to do the right thing: Before Larry Cooper reached out to me, I never would have considered forming a friendship with someone in prison. But I am immensely grateful that he did. I count our relationship as a great blessing in my life, and I am gratified that I played some small part in encouraging him along his path of recovery.
Epilogue
Though only three of the chapters in this book focus on heroes who are still living, my primary purpose here will be lost if readers conclude that heroism is a bygone ideal. It isn’t.
Men and women of courage, principle, and character are all around us. Look and you’ll find them. When you do, recognize and encourage them. Set your own standards high so that you, too, may join their ranks.
Remember that we’re talking about real people here, which means imperfection is rife. Heroism is never a straight line upward. Even the best will disappoint on occasion. But what looks like a setback or a mistake will often prove in hindsight to have been a critical, character-building moment. If a hero falls but then picks himself up, learns from his failures, and becomes an even better person because of them, he has proven he was, and still is, a hero.
All of us are tested every day, just like everyone I write about in this book. We may not pass every test, but that doesn’t have to mean we stop learning or cease improving.
After composing the last chapter of this book, on my friend Larry Cooper, I tried to reach him so he could read my draft and point out any errors. I e-mailed, wrote, texted, and phoned him. Almost a month passed with no response from Larry. I wondered whether something really bad had happened, perhaps something so serious that I should remove the chapter. Then finally a text message popped up on my phone: “Call me when you can!”
Larry had hit one of those bumps in the road I wrote about. He lives in a tough neighborhood and got into a fight. He spent most of March 2016 in jail until he was cleared. When I spoke with him again, he was out, back at work, his spirits renewed. My real disappointment is with myself, because without knowing the circumstances, I had flirted with the temptation to give up on him. That’s no way to encourage anybody, let alone a hero.
If this book inspires more people to heroism, or if it prompts you to help others achieve it, it will—in my mind at least—have been well worth both my time and yours.
Acknowledgments
The author extends a special thanks to John Hartwell for his portraits leading into each chapter, and Sara Seal and the team at Crowdskout for their cover artwork. Thanks to B.K. Marcus, former editor of the Foundation for Economic Education’s magazine, The Freeman, for his editorial suggestions throughout the book. Thanks also to FEE’s chief operating officer, Richard Lorenc, and ISI’s vice president for publications, Jed Donahue, for stewarding this collaboration between these two great organizations dedicated to liberty.
About the Author
Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed is president of the Foundation of Economic Education (FEE). Prior to joining FEE in 2008, he served for twenty years as president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He also taught economics full-time from 1977 to 1984 at Northwood University in Michigan.
Reed is the author or coauthor of seven other books, including Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism and A Republic—If We Can Keep It. A frequent guest on radio and television, he has written thousands of articles for newspapers, magazines, and journals in the United States and abroad. He delivers at least seventy-five speeches each year, and his public speaking has taken him to dozens of countries, from Bulgaria to China to Bolivia. His lectures “Seven Principles of Sound Policy” and “Great Myths of the Great Depression” have been translated into more than a dozen languages and distributed worldwide.
Reed holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Grove City College, which has awarded him its Distinguished Alumni award, and a master’s in history from Slippery Rock State University. He has also received honorary doctorates from Central Michigan University and Northwood University. A native of Pennsylvania and a thirty-year resident of Michigan, he now lives in Georgia.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2016 by Foundation for Economic Education
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4219-2
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
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