Henry Cooper

I was born in Fargo, ND.  When I was just four, my family moved to Minneapolis. I grew up in a pretty typical Midwest family with great parents who cared, excellent teachers and good schools.  Math interested me a great deal, but English bored me and I didn’t like to read.

College days at the University of Minnesota focused on playing bridge.  This wasn’t exactly the path to a long-lasting career, so I took some time from my studies and headed to Australia to see if it really was the “New Frontier”.

It was.  I spent four great months in Sydney.  Then, having decided to return to the University of Minnesota, I made my way back home via 1 ½ months of travel through Asia and 3 ½ months in Europe.   

I learned how to travel frugally and well, but the most important discovery was that most people around the world are friendly, good people and just want to be left alone by their governments.
 
A great surprise awaited me in Minneapolis.  Five days after returning home, two FBI agents informed me that I had been listed as AWOL.   This was, of course, a colossal mistake, but one can’t argue productively with the FBI so I ended up in the army for 19 months.  I returned to the U of M and successfully earned my BA and MBA.
 
While at the University, I was offered a job as Senior Systems Analyst at a bank computer subsidiary and was swiftly introduced to corporate politics.  My first project was cancelled; several people to whom I reported were fired.  I was “reassigned” to a rather interesting project investigating Trust Packages – a short-lived assignment  as my disagreement with the package selection resulted in a rather hasty firing.

It was 1976 and a very difficult time for a systems analyst with just two years experience to find a job. Gambling filled the gap for a while, but didn’t pay the rent.  I began to feel the urge to write and tried my hand first at sonnets and then TV scripts.  Through a conversation with the producers of one of the popular TV shows at the ti