Photo: Robert Holiday Cooper sits outdoors in front of a Ball State University building, wearing a suit and glasses. Courtesy of Ball State University.
BY TERRI GORNEY LEHMAN
Robert Cooper Audubon Society is a National Audubon Society chapter that covers Delaware, Blackford, Jay, Henry, Grant, Madison, and Randolph counties. It has around 400 members in east-central Indiana and, in 2024, the chapter celebrated its 50th anniversary. Every year, during its annual conservation awards, the highest honor given to an individual or organization is the Robert H. and Esther L. Cooper Conservation Award.
Robert Holiday Cooper, for whom the chapter and the award are named, was born in 1901 in Cadiz, Henry County, Indiana. Following several years of saving the money he earned from his early employment, he was able to attend college, in spite of his parents’ opposition. He received his bachelor’s degree from Ball State University (BSU) in 1929. It was in biology class that he met his future wife, Esther Munro. Esther was born in Illinois in 1900. The Munro family moved to Geneva, Indiana, in 1916.
Esther supported Robert financially after their marriage by teaching while he earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at Iowa State University. After five years away from Muncie, they would return in 1935 when Robert accepted a position in BSU’s Biology Department.
He had a productive career at Ball State University. He became head of the department in 1950 and continued on the faculty until his retirement in 1968. One of his major achievements was overseeing the formation of the Ball African Bird Collection with Virginia Ball. The BSU Cooper Science Building is named in his honor.
Robert was active with the local Audubon chapter named for him and with the Indiana Audubon Society. In 1960, he served as president of the Indiana Audubon Society.
Robert and Esther’s success as a couple was fostered by their shared love of learning and the natural world. They were especially passionate about conservation.
Esther’s parents purchased the “old” Porter farm in Geneva. It was the 231-acre farm of Charles and Gene Stratton-Porter. In 1994, Esther and her sister-in-law, Agnes Biery Fravel Munro, donated the 25-acre woods and the Harford No. 6 schoolhouse ruins to ACRES Land Trust. Gene Stratton-Porter made this schoolhouse famous in her book, A Girl of the Limberlost.
In 1969, Esther and Robert donated more than 31 acres off Bethel Road in Muncie to BSU, to be managed by the Department of Biology. It was part of the 123-acre farm they purchased in 1951. The original donated parcel, known as the Esther and Robert Cooper Memorial Woodland Area, is now part of the larger 89-acre BSU field property called Cooper Farm.
The lives of Robert and Esther were long and productive, encompassing achievements too extensive to be in a single article. Robert died in 1990 and Esther in 1997. They are buried together in Knightstown, Indiana.
Author’s Note: Thank you to Barb Stedman, Catherine Kubo, and Rose Jeffery for editing this article.
This blog post was written by Hoosier historian and naturalist Terri Gorney Lehman as part of her Flight Paths Through History series, exploring the people, places, and moments that have shaped Indiana birding.
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