February 6 is the birthday of the late David W. Cooley, president of the Memphis Chamber of Commerce from 1968-73 and then again from 1984-95. I went to work for him in 1987. I was 25 and reasonably sure that I was pretty fair PR hand. He assured me that I was not nearly as good as I thought I was, taught me a good deal, and recognized other talents in which he encouraged me (large scale event planning being one). No Gen X or Millennial could last a day with Mr. Cooley; they would simply wither, die, and melt down to a small pile of ash after one of his inspired chewings out. A Marine who rose to the rank of corporal, he was no nonsense. “Your turn in the barrel”, “the hog is in the ditch”, or “that don’t get it walkin’ or ridin” were frightening phrases but not nearly as much as a note on his special blue notepad.
He could also praise and mentor. He was an excellent communicator. I learned a lot about public speaking from him. I’m not talking about the sanitized TED Talk pablum that passes for speaking these days. I am talk about a stump speech. Cadence is a lost art. Most important of all, a speaker must watch the reaction of his or her audience. About 75 % of public speakers I hear are just tone deaf and canned. It’s a waste of everyone time really. Oh, I can tell you from experience that you have not lived until you encounter a skeptical or hostile audience. That’s a wake up call unlike any other.
Cooley was a lifelong chamber man. It was a career path and required an interesting skill set – part researcher, part preacher, part negotiator, coalition builder, and driven competitor. Civic pride on a scale befitting the town you worked in and for. He had a favorite short poem he would sometimes work into speeches, a little doggerel verse called “The Kind of a Town” or something like that; wish I could remember the words. If he had been preaching to a congregation, this would have been his benediction.
International Paper came to Memphis on his watch. There were other notable accomplishments in that era as well. It was a good time for Memphis and the Mid-South.
He was rough on my in my youth and
he wonderfully kind decades later when he would check in with me periodically to
see how Memphis was faring from his retirement in South Carolina. A chamber man
through and through. David W. Cooley
1929-2022.
