Margaret’s Obituary Warrensburg, NY – Margaret Elizabeth Denman Cooper LongoBetty Longo died January 27, 2019 at Saratoga Hospital aged 97 after a short illness. Many members of her family were at her bedside as she passed peacefully. Betty was born at Susquehanna, PA January 24, 1922, rather than at the family farm near Liberty, NY, because her mother was 48, and because her uncle, who delivered her there, was a skilled physician.
She was raised on the farm at Neversink, NY, named after the Navesink band of Delaware Indians. She was descended from four Mayflower passengers and early Dutch and Huguenot settlers of the Hudson Valley. A female relative was captured by and rescued from Esopus Indians in 1662.
There was no electricity on the farm. Her memories of that life and time were golden ones. She was the last born of eleven children, ten living to maturity.
All predeceased her. Her mother was Sarah Grant and her father, William Van Benschoten. Denman.
Her father had attended Springfield College two years after basketball was invented there by James Naismith. He was involved in Naismith’s perfection of the game and succeeded Amos Alonzo Stagg as center on the football team the last year the flying wedge was a legal play, 1894. She attended a two room school house in Neversink, and graduated from Liberty High School in 1940.
She married E. Leslie,Cooper, Jr. (Bud), in 1941 at Hurley, NY where her parents had moved after having their farm taken for a New York City Reservoir. The young couple relocated to West Hartford, CT in the first years of the War where she worked as a seamstress at I.J. Fox department store, and Bud worked at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Engines. After he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, they moved to Perry, FL until the base was decommissioned near the end of the war.
Bud was ordered to an infantry battalion at Fort Sill, OK where a huge explosion heard one day was explained as an ammunition depot that had blown up, when in fact it was the sound of the first atomic bomb detonation hundreds of miles away in New Mexico. After the War, Bud worked for New York Telephone in Liberty and was transferred to Albany in 1956 where the family settled in Delmar. Betty taught in the Methodist Sunday school and served on the church council.
Bud died of a heart attack at age 40. She went to work for the New York Division of Corporations and later the Bureau of Servicemen’s Voting. She married Lawrence Longo two years later and moved to LaMesa, a San Diego suburb where she worked in her nephew’s medical practice.
Larry’s two small children became loving sons to her. Larry died in 2002. She then returned to New York, residing at Embury Apartments in Saratoga Springs where two sisters resided, until her death.
She was fearless in attacking home improvement projects. She was skilled at crafts, crocheting angel dolls as well as Christmas ornaments that she gifted and sold. She was a skilled cook and baker.
Her rolls and pies were special. She was a loving mother who made sure that Christmas was celebrated with seasonal decorations in every nook and cranny of the house. She loved her flowers and gardens.
As a young woman of the 1950s, she cheerfully embraced the role of housewife, doing her work whistling or with a beautiful singing voice. She read all of Louis Lamour’s pulp western novels, Tony Hillerman’s books, and collected John Wayne movies. When she returned to New York, she became a huge Syracuse basketball fan.
Her first son, Wayne Leslie Cooper of Colorado predeceased her. She is survived by his children, Christine Toth, (Steve), Brian Cooper, (Liz), and Cindy Clement, (Bret) and by his widow, Linda Gertenbach, ( Dennis) and eight great grandchildren, all residing in Colorado. Also surviving is her second son, James W. Cooper, (Vicky), of Warrensburg and his children Andrea Cooper Sage (Eric) of Schenectady and Emily Cooper Duksa,, (Joseph) of Steamboat Springs, CO, and two great-grandchildren.
Her sons by marriage, Lawrence Longo, (Vicki) of Big Bear Lake, CA and Steven Longo of Lakeside, CA were a loving comfort to her in her last years. Many nephews and nieces predeceased her and many survive. She often expressed that she was lucky to have been married to two wonderful men.
The family wishes to express their thanks to the aides, nurses and Dr. Wong of Saratoga Hospital who compassionately and empathetically cared for her in her last week of life. Thanks are also extended to Dr. Farrell who treated her as her G.P. until retirement for his loving concern and blueberries that were brought to her by him. Thanks is also extended to Ellen and Rose and her other friends and staff at Embury Apartments who brought happiness and joy to her life the seventeen years she lived there.
The family is especially grateful to her friend and aide, Kim Clagg for the loving and extraordinary care furnished our mother in the last year of her life. A memorial service will be held at the convenience of the family at a later date. Her ashes will be buried at Liberty, NY in the E. Leslie Cooper plot.
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