Following a New Path

FOLLOWING A NEW PATH

IT’S NOT ONLY THE YOUNG WHO SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED TO FIND A CALLING AND PURSUE THEIR DREAM.

By Marie Bradby | Photos by Melissa Donald

Follow your dreams! Today’s Transitions talked to three local leaders with decades of experience who have no intention of retiring anytime soon. They are serving their communities while being engaged in meaningful work that they love.

WHEN IT’S WITH PURPOSE, IT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE WORK

Why is Marita Willis working so hard?

“I just think that’s part of my spiritual gift,” says Marita, 65, chief empowerment officer of Hope Collaborative, a community development program serving immigrant children and their families. “The base we serve is an eclectic group of refugees. When you put a purpose on it, it doesn’t feel like work.”

Marita and her husband of 44 years, Bob, grew up “in the Park Hill housing projects. We both had single parents. I didn’t know it was a housing project the way we look at it today. I did not identify as poor. My mother never had a car. People gave to us. People would show up at our door with food, not knowing we didn’t have food. “I grew up at the Cabbage Patch [a recreation and development program for youth],” she says. “Everything started out with prayer.” Marita is heavily involved in the community. She’s on the board of the Louisville Water Company, is chair of MSD, and serves on the Kentucky Derby Festival Executive Board, where she was recently chair of the festival. She’s also on the boards of the Norton Foundation and the Nativity Academy at St. Boniface. “I love Louisville,” she says. “I love this community. We are a giving community. If all of us take an opportunity to give back to the village, we can change it. We are a really divided community, and we don’t talk about it. Now we will be forced to talk about that. What changes are we going to make? Is it going to be real change or window dressing?” Marita and her husband have suffered the loss of both of their children. Their son Rashawn died at age sixteen in the flood of 1997. Their daughter RaTonya, who had Sickle Cell disease, passed just three years ago. Both volunteered and mentored. “Rashawn gave back a lot,” Marita says. He went to Catholic school, and she says he insisted she go to PTA meetings. “‘There are others that you could stand in for,’ he said. ‘If not you, then who?’ That drives me today.”

She feels like being involved has made Louisville her classroom.

As chair of the Kentucky Derby Festival, Marita says it was “a phenomenal experience when I rode down the street for the parade. As a child, we used to walk down to the parade. That was our Derby. The parade would resonate with me. My grandchildren and son-in-law rode with me. When we got down Broadway, the people who knew me from Park Hill, they were screaming and yelling, ‘Rita! I was looking for you! I’m so happy for you!,’ I couldn’t stop crying. ‘Honey’ — my grandkids call me Honey — ‘what are you crying about?’ It was amazing. People care. They came out in full force.

“I learned so much by being the chair. Our voice matters. We need to be present. Volunteering is mentally and physically good for your health. I’ve learned in the pandemic that if you are productive, you don’t have to be busy. You are getting things done, not just doing a task. It gives me something to look forward to. People think you need a lot of this and that. You need yourself and willingness to do it.”

“WHEN YOU PUT A PURPOSE ON IT, IT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE WORK.”

— MARITA WILLIS

FROM POLICE WORK — TO LAW — TO PEACE CORPS — TO TEACHING

Lonnie Cooper of Jeffersonville, Indiana, has had several careers.

“My wife won’t let me retire,” quips Lonnie, 70, whose wife is Clark County Circuit Court Judge Vicki Carmichael. But kidding aside, Lonnie loves what he does. He has worked in law enforcement for 20 years, been an attorney for 25 years, and now teaches criminal justice and legal studies at Ivy Tech Community College. “I get paid for doing things that bring me so much joy,” he said. “What I would not do is get me a rocking chair on the front porch or get up at noon every day.” When he was 42, Lonnie retired from police work in drug enforcement — where he went after doctors, pharmacists, and pharmaceutical companies — and got a law degree from the University of Mississippi because “he always enjoyed the legal side of his cases,” he said. He moved back to Southern Indiana and began working as an attorney. He also holds a master’s in public administration from the University of Louisville. “I was the only actively practicing civil rights attorney in Southern Indiana in the mid ’90s,” Lonnie says. “I took on a case for a young black man working for Clarksville. They would hire black people in only two jobs — cutting grass or working on the back of a garbage truck, and Dennis Johnson had done both of those. He was a corpsman in the Navy and applied to be a fireman. The fire chief asked him, ‘Dennis, wouldn’t you feel uncomfortable being the only black person in the fire department?’” Lonnie won the case, and Dennis Johnson is now the deputy fire chief in Clarksville.

When he was 60, Lonnie took 27 months off to do volunteer work. “I had this nagging sense of an unfilled obligation,” Lonnie says. “I joined the Peace Corps, working at an orphanage in the Philippines.”

He and his wife might do a tour together with the Peace Corps when they retire. “We got a special gift out of my first Peace Corps service. We brought a young woman back [to the U.S.] to go to Ivy Tech, and six months after she got here, we adopted her. She’s 26 now, working on her third college degree.”

At Ivy Tech, Lonnie relies on his extensive criminal justice and legal work experience. “An academic education is half-baked if the person hasn’t practiced in the area,” Lonnie says. “I teach about what I know. I tell them about the wonderful people I have worked with and the ones who weren’t. I tell them the story about Dennis Johnson and other cases. Yesterday, in Criminal Justice 101 class, a student asked me to help him get his first job in law enforcement. He soon reports in uniform to the Clark County Sheriff’s Department. I mentor people a lot. I can’t count the number of people who have boosted me in my life.”

For about four years, Lonnie and his wife have taken students on international travel trips. “The students see things we never noticed. Going on those trips with those kids, we feel like we get more out of it than they do. It’s incredible.”

THE WRITTEN WORD ENDURES AND SO DOES SHE

Carol Butler, president and CEO of Butler Books, continues to publish books so she can keep her husband’s legacy alive.

“My husband Bill and I founded Butler Books in 1989,” says Carol, 70. “When Bill died of cancer in 2009, it was very important to me and to our sons that we keep our family business going in his memory and honor. Both of our sons have worked for Butler Books, and our son Billy helps me run the company now.

“Over the last 32 years, we have been honored to help hundreds of local authors and organizations publish books. Many of those books capture and preserve the history of our community and will hopefully stay on shelves for hundreds of years.

“Nothing is more satisfying than acting as a ‘midwife’ for people giving birth to wonderful books,” she says.

“The anniversary books are very important to me. That’s what gets me up every day, having a role in documenting the history of Louisville, preserving the legacy of a lot of Louisville’s organizations. People call all the time and say their organization is going to have an anniversary. That is what motivates me and the reason why I don’t want to retire. I’m still healthy, and this is what I want to do.

“As long as our phone keeps ringing and I am able to stay healthy, I plan to continue to run Butler Books. Carol says that her husband’s grave in Cave Hill Cemetery is engraved with ‘Littera scripta manet’ (the written word endures). It’s our family’s legacy, and an important gift and service we can offer authors and organizations in the Louisville community.”

Carol’s company and many of its books have won national awards. Her bestsellers are on bookshelves and coffee tables throughout the region: Actors Theatre of Louisville: Fifty Years; 65 Years: making.moving.art, to commemorate the 65th anniversary of The Louisville Ballet; Two Centuries of Black Louisville: A Photographic History by Mervin Aubespin, Kenneth Clay, and J. Blaine Hudson; The Kentucky Derby Festival: 50 Years of Fun; The Great Flood of 1937by historian Rick Bell; The Big Bat by Anne Jewell and the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory; and All Aboard! The Belle of Louisvilleby Marie Bradby and illustrated by Annette Cable.