SSG Silas Jay Cooper Jr

SSG Silas Jay Cooper Jr, was born 3 Jan 1921 in Clio, Michigan. He was the 8th of 11 children born to Silas Jay and Minnie Evalena (Smith) Cooper.His father worked as a teamster in a lumber yard. Jay, as he preferred to be known, apparently had worked in the mining industry but was unemployed when he registered for the draft in 1942.

Interestingly, Jay enlisted in November 1942 as Jay S. Cooper and so is reported as such in the official records. He was sent to the European theater and assigned to A Company 116th Infantry on 22 Jun 1944 as a PFC. First wounded by machine gun fire in July 1944, he spent almost a month in hospital before returning to the unit. He returned to the unit in time to participate in the effort to liberate Brest and was killed in action on 26 Aug 1944. 

He is now buried in Montrose Cemetery in Montrose, Michigan.