First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby for Otterbein student Patience Cooper and her husband, former Otterbein student Ben Cooper.
Around 2 p.m. Sept. 17, Clarence Gabriel Cooper IV was born into the world. Proud father Ben was there to cut the umbilical cord.
Clarence, who will be called Gabriel — Gabe for short — is named after his father, a third generation Clarence Cooper. To avoid confusion, the Clarence Coopers in the family all go by their middle names.
“He looks just like his daddy,” Patience said. “Nothing like me.”
Friends and family of the couple, as well as Patience’s sorority sisters from PAX, came out to welcome baby Gabe.
According to Patience, the support overwhelmed the nursing staff and filled up the waiting room.
To prepare for the baby, Patience was thrown two different baby showers, one from friends and one from family.
Her shower from her friends was thrown at Old Bag of Nails. Two of her good friends, junior environmental science major Loren Birdsall — Patience’s roommate before she got married — and junior psychology major Anne Moreland, threw the shower.
“We got a lot of stuff like clothes and toys and diapers,” Patience said.
The couple, who met at Otterbein, were married in an impromptu wedding at the Zeta Phi fraternity house in April on an eight-hour notice. The two worked during those hours to piece together a last-minute wedding, which included getting a cake at Wal-Mart, having a friend buy a dress that Patience never tried on and sending a mass text that said, “Getting married at the Zeta House. Who wants to come?” to all their friends.
That night, the two were wed by Tan & Cardinal copy editor Chelsea Coleman, a senior journalism and public relations major, who is a close friend of the couple and an ordained minister. They said their vows in front of a full house of their friends, family and extended Greek families.
Since the marriage, Patience and Ben have moved to Granville. Ben was originally going to enlist in the Army, as reported back in March, but had a change of plans for his family.
For their future, the plan is to have Patience finish school while Ben works, then switch roles.
“We also want more babies,” Patience said. “But not for a while.”
