Timothy Cooper

NORFOLK – On July 23, Timothy Cooper lost his battle with a series of overwhelming illnesses, leaving a multitude of friends, relatives, and former members of the Naro Expanded Video to fondly remember this extraordinary man.

With highly developed interests that encompassed film, music, literature, and modernist art, Tim’s critical columns for Portfolio, Ghent, and City magazines were not just readable, but enlightening and delightful, especially when his humor blended with sarcasm in reviews.

But he found his sweet spot when he and Linda McGreevy reopened the video store in 1996, which eventually contained 42,000 titles curated by Cooper over the years until its closure (by streaming’s siren call) as a non-profit in 2019. The collection now resides in the Perry Library at Old Dominion University, available as always—but, alas, without Tim’s presence on the floor, “schmoozing” and engaging its membership day after day.

Tim had an exceptional education, from its beginnings at the Williams School, where he first learned French, to Norfolk Academy, at the time an all-boys institution. He excelled at Latin and composition, both of which helped fuel his strengths in writing, editing, and the acquisition of other languages from German to Spanish. After the first of two summers at the Mount Herman school his undergraduate years were spent in Washington, D.C. at Georgetown University, where he majored in French, spending two summers at the Mount Herman School in Massachusetts in its intensive programs, one summer with a family in Dijon, and his junior year in the university’s program in Fribourg, Switzerland.

After graduation in 1968, he continued his French studies at the University of Virginia, returning to Norfolk to work with his father, Mervyn, in his optometry office on Church Street, where he was fondly known among locals as “My Man Smooth.” In 1979, Tim and Linda McGreevy, newly hired to teach modernist art history at ODU, met after an incident involving a dog (fully explained in the 2019 documentary, I Found It at the Video Store), beginning a 45-year (37 of them married) joyous and supportive life together. They traveled extensively and often in Europe, seeking art, patisseries, gregarious locals, and odd destinations, so long as there was a movie to be seen after nightfall. In this country, they attended Telluride’s film festival (far more interesting than their experience in the Cannes version), and for Linda’s articles and catalogue essays, repeatedly to New York, and occasionally farther afield in California.

His family is thankful to the staff at Maimonides Health Center for their care of Tim during much of his final year, and to the “gal pals,” Barbara, Susan, Linda, and Mary Lou, who gathered around him every day to exchange quips and feed him candy.

Tim was predeceased by his father, Mervyn Cooper, and mother, Ruth Cooper, friends John Tucker and William Laderberg, among others. He leaves to remember him, his wife, Linda McGreevy, brother William Cooper, nephews Bruce and Jason Cooper and their families, and relatives in the Cooper family in Norfolk. Graveside services were private.

Donations to the Naro Expanded Video Collection at the Perry Library at Old Dominion University will ensure that Timothy Cooper’s legacy will continue to engage film buffs. Online condolences may be offered to the family at hdoliver.com.