WITS END - JO LEE Magazine

THE PROVOCATIVE & CHALLENGING
WORLD OF ARCERI
By
Gene Arceri
New York – San Francisco – London
Gene Arceri is an award winning author and multi-media personality.
ANDERSON
COOPER
CNN’S ADVENTUROUS CAVALIER
His mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, when a debutante, looked like
a Eurasian Princess lost in the horizons of Shangri-La. She
was like a star on the golden Manhattan-Merry-Go-Round,
with lovers Sinatra, Brando, Hughes and celebrity jester
Truman Capote.
An ambitious thespian, Gloria scored in the major league
through her designs. Anderson’s father, Wyatt Cooper, a
Southerner had the air of a Civil War Calvary Officer. Their
progeny, Anderson, resembled neither. More a James Bond
kinsman, a debonair soldier-of-fortune, with a secret gleam
hidden behind his blue eyes. His sincere compassion and
understanding of historic world events, his verbal and
physical charms whether in tuxedo or jeans, has captivated
CNN viewers.
Anderson was only ten years old when I interviewed his
father while promoting his book Families for the PBS
Network, in San Francisco, California. Wyatt’s recorded
comments revealed his deep emotional and spiritual values. “I
did a lot of things as an actor in the early 50s during The
Golden Age of Television.” His recall and anecdotes were
perceptive and humorous.
Wyatt Cooper met Gloria at a dinner party - they married and
soon he became patriarch of sons Carter and Anderson.
“Space is a great enemy of the family today. There was a time
when we stayed close to the same area. We lived for
generations on the same acres in Alabama. There is a family
cemetery that I visited the last time where nobody had been
buried there for over thirty years. It went back for generations
prior to the Civil War. I had a grandfather buried there who
had been killed by a slave. I took my children back … but I
didn’t know the pasture would be gone; the stream I’d played
in would be gone; the road would not be where it was, and all
of our cotton fields were planted in Pine Forests. It was as if
everything had been erased.
Wyatt did not live to know that his son Carter would commit
suicide on July 23, 1988, age twenty-three. Anderson then
twenty-one said, “Loss is a theme that I think about.
Christmastime 1977, I waved good-bye to Wyatt Cooper,
hoping we would meet again. On January 5, 1978, he died
from yet another heart attack, when he was only fifty years
old.” Wyatt commented on tape: “Your life is brief, hold onto
it, make it your own experience, be in touch with your
feelings, don’t be afraid of them…”
30 JO LEE SUMMER 2007