Mt. Pleasant Borough native Glenn D. Cooper spent more than 20 years pondering that which is, which fittingly is the title he gave to a book he recently authored, he said.

“I still have the same thirst for knowledge as I always did,” said Cooper, 86, who now lives in East Huntingdon.

“It was this sense of wonder that led me to write this book,” he said.

Upon retiring from Westinghouse in 1993 following a 40-year career as a mechanical engineer, Cooper began to pen a series of essays dissecting the studies of his professional peers topics in physics, quantum mechanics, relativity, cosmology, the cosmic mind, the phenomena of life, religion and philosophy, he said.

“My background in physics and mathematics helped,” he added.

The product of such toil, “That Which Is,” was self-published by Cooper recently via Amazon.

In the 256-page work, his essays appear in a complete canon accompanied by a bibliography of sources which inspired him to produce much of its contents, he said.

“I'm glad we got all those essays into a book,” Cooper said. “The bibliography contains 265 books, and I've got all those books here with me.”

In the book he attempts to offer insight gained by those who have explored answers to the age-old questions of why the world exists, how the quantum world creates the world humans perceive, the meaning of relativity, and exactly what life means, he said.

“I would like the reader to gain a sense of the mystery and wonder of existence, the creation, the cosmos, or what I call ‘that which is,' and to realize it is far different from our usual, ‘take-for-granted' view of it,” Cooper said.

Man starts local, travels extensively abroad

Born and raised in the borough, Cooper is one of six children born to the late John and Jerusha Cooper.

Throughout his childhood, Cooper worked as a Mt. Pleasant Journal paper carrier prior to graduating in 1946 from Ramsay High School.

He promptly enlisted in the U.S. Navy, where he underwent aviation training via the V-5 program, which offered two years of college as payment.

While serving in the military until 1948, Cooper attended Keystone College in Lackawanna County, where he earned an Associate's degree in engineering.

He then enrolled at the University of California-Los Angeles graduating in 1953 with a Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering.

Cooper was immediately hired at Westinghouse and worked with the company for nearly four decades while based in the eastern part of Pittsburgh and Orlando, Fla.

“I worked for three months in Canada, I also got to India for a month, I got to China three times, once on business in 1980, along with Spain, Saudi Arabia and Japan,” Cooper said.

He eventually returned home after retiring, following the death of his late wife, Angela.

Throughout their marriage, the couple raised four children — Stephanie Cooper of Venice, Italy; Elizabeth Kauffman of Arlington, Va.; Linda Cooper-Jang of Bucheon, South Korea; and David Cooper of Mt. Lebanon.

Family, friends encourage author

During more than two decades compiling his essays, Cooper would mail them to his daughter-in-law Tammy Cooper, David's wife, who typed each of them for him.

In mid-2013, he was encouraged to publish the book by Kauffman and long-time professional colleague Donald Reilly of Monroeville.

“I never intended to write a book,” Cooper said. “The material for what became the book was a series of essays I wrote after my retirement for my own record, and for friends and family.”

However, Kauffman, a 30-year foreign service officer at U.S. State Department, was intent on persuading her father to relay his thoughts and insight to page.

“My dad's travel gave him exposure to people across the world and how people from across the world think about things,” said Kauffman, who handled the editing of Cooper's book over the course of 18 months concluding in December.

“He just had such a sense of wonder about physics and the sky … when I was young we spent a lot of summer nights out on the porch looking up at the stars,” she said. “He'd say ‘You know we're looking into the past, because what happened up on those stars happened thousands of years ago already?'”

Kauffman said viewing multiple drafts of the manuscript allowed her to converse with her father on a heightened plane.

“I think, as a writer, my dad can give examples, help them understand concepts in the form of a metaphor … his essays were very understandable,” she said. “In his acknowledgments, he said he thinks more of us should pay attention to what physics has to say. For him it's become a defining way in which he views the world.”

A fellow mechanical engineer who met Cooper in spring of 1953 at Westinghouse, Reilly said he faithfully supplied him with a copy of each essay as he completed them through the years.

“I've got a quite a few of them in my desk drawer,” said Reilly, 86.

Upon reading the book, Reilly came away impressed by Cooper's skills as a writer.

“I just thought it was wonderful and easy to read,” he said. “If (Glenn) was an English major, he would have done great work in that field.”

Book delivers series of messages

There are four main facts about the world, or that which is, that Cooper hopes those who read his book understand, he said.

The first is that there exists an invisible world from which what humans consider “the real world” has emerged, Cooper said.

“This is the quantum world of which we know so much, and yet understand nothing,” he said. “It is mindlike, full of energy sometimes manifested as matter, and it is a oneness with all particulate matter somehow aware of all other matter.”

The second fact is that all is one, Cooper said, meaning that all things are part of other things and are nothing in themselves.

“For example, a piece of matter in an empty universe would have no gravity acting on it, and thus no weight,” he said. “It would have no inertia without space time to accelerate in, thus it couldn't exist without the universe.”

As such all things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence on nothing in themselves, he added.

The third fact is that “the cosmos is made of equal amounts of positive and negative energy and matter, which amounts to a sum total of zero, as it is all made of nothingness,” Cooper said.

And the fourth fact is that the cosmos must be constituted of mind, the mysterious “stuff,” which give it what appears to be a material and energy existence, he said.

“Our mind and all minds are a manifestation of the cosmic mind,” Cooper said.

And despite what is known, science and philosophy continuously prove there is always more layers of knowledge to uncover and experience, he said.

“The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know,” Cooper said. “The mystery becomes even deeper and greater.”

A highlight of Cooper's life came when he was surrounded by several of those who authored books listed in his bibliography while attending a conference in 2005 celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publication of three papers by Albert Einstein which revolutionized the field of physics, including the theory of relativity, at the Aspen Institute's campus in Aspen, Colo., he added.

“I met about five people who were pretty high up, in my estimation,” Cooper said.

Family remains a focal point

Despite all of his study and knowledge, Cooper admits the core meaning he derives from life comes from his relationships with friends and family.

“With the essays and the book, I'm just glad I had something to really occupy my mind,” he said.

Only Cooper's elder sister, Ethel, 94, remains from his original family, and she still resides in the house in which she and her siblings were all born.

She said the man she still kiddingly refers to as “the younger one” is a treasure.

“There is an intelligence and a knowledge that many of us don't understand, but we still appreciate it,” she said, adding that she visits her brother daily to play gin rummy and watch programs on Netflix.

“I just admire him so much … he's a very deep thinker.”

A.J. Panian is an editor for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 724-547-5722 or apanian@tribweb.com.

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