In Memoriam: Frederick Cooper ’64, P’94, Trustee Emeritus Cooper served on the Board of Trustees from 2008 to 2017.

W&L News Office
June 18, 2025

Frederick Cooper ’64, P’94, trustee emeritus of Washington and Lee University, died June 14, 2025. He was 83.

Cooper was born Jan. 18, 1942, in Thomasville, Georgia. He spent his early childhood years in Tampa, Florida, before moving with his family to Greenville, South Carolina, in 1952. He graduated from Parker High School in 1960 and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in history at Washington and Lee. While at W&L, he belonged to Pi Kappa Phi fraternity and served as vice president of the Interfraternity Council. He was also a member of ROTC and the debate team.

Upon graduation from W&L in 1964, Cooper enrolled in the University of Georgia School of Law, earning his degree in 1967. He married Helen Dykes in 1966, and, following law school, he served in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, with assignments in Utah and Germany. After the Army, he joined a private practice in Thomasville, where his family had returned in 1961.

In 1973, he joined Flower Foods and became the company’s first general counsel. Over the next 16 years, he rose to become president and vice chairman of the board of directors, guiding Flower Foods from a regional bakery to a Fortune 500 company and one of the largest baking companies in the U.S.

In 1990, Cooper launched his own baked goods company, CooperSmith, which quickly grew with acquisitions in Mobile, Alabama, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Nashville, Tennessee, before selling it to Earthgrains in 1997. He served as chairman of the American Bakers Association and was inducted into the American Society of Baking Hall of Fame in 2023. He also founded a private investment firm, Cooper Capital, LLC, in 1998, which he jokingly called “the world’s smallest private equity firm.”

In his 50th reunion Calyx, Cooper remarked on the unique exposure to the U.S. political system through the 1964 Mock Convention, where the W&L student body predicted Barry Goldwater as the future Republican presidential nominee (they were right, to the surprise of political pundits). He built on that early political experience throughout his life, serving as chairman of the Georgia Republican Party in the early 1980s and acting as the state’s campaign chairman for George H. W. Bush and later George W. Bush. In 2003, he was appointed by President George W. Bush as chairman of the host committee for the G8 Summit in Sea Island, Georgia.

Later, Cooper turned his energy toward philanthropy and civic advancement, focusing on education, health care, conservation and economic development. As a recipient of a scholarship himself, he and his then-wife Helen Dykes Cooper created the Cooper-Archer Scholarship at W&L.

Cooper served on the W&L Board of Trustees from 2008 to 2017. Additionally, he served on the Parents Committee for the On the Shoulders of Giants capital campaign, the Reunion Class Committee for his 45th and 50th reunions, the Williams School Advisory Board from 2002 to 2017 (becoming an emeritus member in 2017), the Mock Convention Advisory Board for the 2012 convention and the Area Campaign Committee from 1992 to 1995 and 2001 to 2003. He also supported the W&L Fund and the Colonnade restoration project, and he was recognized on the Honored Benefactors Wall in Washington Hall in 2013.

Cooper gave back to his law alma mater by serving on the board of trustees for the University of Georgia Foundation. Beyond higher education, he devoted time to promoting his home state’s economic development and future. He served on the board of the Georgia Research Alliance, as well the boards of the George State Chamber of Commerce and the Metropolitan Atlanta Chamber. Cooper was closely involved with the Winship Cancer Institute and the Mayo Clinic, and he supported causes that reflected his love of nature and history, such as the Owens Foundation for Wildlife Conservation, Zoo Atlanta and the Atlanta History Center.

Cooper is survived by his sons, Derick Cooper ’94 (Beckwith ’90, ’93L) and Jay Cooper (Hillary), and his five grandchildren: Preston, Carter, Raleigh, Sam and Charlotte.

A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, June 20, in Thomasville, Georgia, at the First Presbyterian Church. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in his memory to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Cooper’s full obituary was published on Legacy.com.