Cooper-Young recently lost a resident; I lost a neighbor and friend. Since the 1930s, Ella Mae Hasty has lived at the same address with her husband. She was independent and somewhat difficult to know. My mother remembered one day the door bell rang. Mrs. Hasty was standing on the porch with a cup and stated, “I need to borrow a cup of sugar.” Remember those days? After that she became a good friend and close neighbor.

As the years went by, she would recall Cooper-Young but not as we know it now. The Drum Shop was the Peabody movie theater. Street cars ran the middle of Cooper from Young to Madison. There were several grocery stores and a hardware store at the corner of Cooper and Young where she shopped. She knew every crack in the sidewalks and every bump in the streets. Her love for her husband and church and enjoyment of ceramics was her life. God gave her 99 years on this earth. I will miss her.

– Bob Isgren

Joseph R. Tracy

April 18th, 1936 – February 8th, 2010

Joseph R. Tracy became a Cooper-Young Community Association member in 2009 and had renewed his membership for 2010. He had been ill for a long time. After his wife of 37 years passed away, he moved to Evelyn Avenue. He leaves behind his sister, Jane Tracy, of Evelyn Avenue.