Pete Cooper, the former head of the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga who helped with some of Chattanooga’s biggest fundraising and community improvement projects, died Saturday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 75.
Cooper began his career at the former American National Bank in 1970 and was a senior vice president in the trust department. The bank’s chair, Scott L. Probasco Jr., asked Cooper to head the community foundation as its first full-time staffer in 1990. Cooper built the foundation by soliciting donations from many of Chattanooga’s wealthiest individuals to work on an array of community initiatives, including the 21st century waterfront plan that helped upgrade Chattanooga’s downtown riverfront area and its major attractions. He retired in 2015.
Cooper also helped start the Together We Can Scholarship program at the community foundation. The program is targeted at first-generation, college-bound students and students from low-income families wanting to go to either technical or four-year colleges or universities.
Former U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, who also served as Chattanooga’s mayor from 2001 to 2005, said Cooper played a pivotal role in uniting different fundraising efforts for the Tennessee Aquarium, the Hunter Museum of Art and the Creative Discovery Museum and expanding the effort to help complete the $120 million waterfront improvement plan in less than three years.
“Pete Cooper had such credibility that when we did the 21st century waterfront, all of the dollars for the private part of the development went into the community foundation with a two-page agreement,” Corker said in a telephone interview Monday. “The donors and I trusted the organization and Pete’s leadership so much that we were able to go through this entire project, including design and construction, in only 35 months.”