Grandkids give woman a second chance

Raising grandkids offers 2nd chance at parenthood

It is dusk and the street lights at Golden Acres in Pompano Beach flicker, announcing nightfall. Like clockwork, an army of children stops frolicking and heads for home.

For them, darkness is like an alarm clock signaling that playtime is over.

Ten children file into the Cooper household. One child sprawls on an old beige couch, bobbing his head to the bass of an MTV video. Another sneaks a cherry Popsicle from the refrigerator before dinner. A third gossips on the phone.

Three more race through the living room escaping the wrath of an older brother.

The euphoria continues until a familiar car rolls up.

``Grandma's here!'' one child yells out.

In the span of 10 seconds, the household goes from chaos to serenity. Children scurry off the couch, press the wrinkles out of its slipcover with their hands, scoop up stray shoes, and lower the TV volume.

By the time Frankie Mae Cooper appears at the doorway, weary from searching for another home for her family, the children are sitting like angels in a room decorated with ceramic statues of Jesus and Mary.

At 49, Cooper is a professional mother. She has been caring for children most of her life.

She dropped out of school in fifth grade to help raise three sisters. She had five kids, four of whom have spent time in jail.

To put food on the table, Cooper picked beans, tomatoes and cucumbers on the once fertile farmland where her housing project now stands.

When she could have been making plans for her golden years, Cooper became a mother again.

She took custody of her daughter's 10 children after the daughter, Beverly Rawls, 33, got hooked on crack cocaine. Rawls now is serving 23 years for stabbing a man to death in an argument.

One by one, the courts awarded the children to Cooper -- seven girls and three boys, ages 6 to 16.

When Cooper took the last one, 6-year-old Portia, into her already cramped, subsidized four-bedroom home in 1995, the Pompano Beach Public Housing Authority started eviction proceedings.

Cooper couldn't bear to see family parceled out to foster homes.

``They're my life,'' she said. ``I want them to have something I never gave my children -- a chance in life. Some of them could be doctors or lawyers. The Lord let me raise them because I didn't raise mine the right way.''

Mothering wasn't always so easy.

When Cooper was younger, she drank and partied. She wasn't always there for her children. In 1981, she received two years probation for numbers running.

Something happened in the early 1980s. She found out that Beverly was using crack cocaine and selling the children's clothing for money to buy drugs.

Cooper felt someone had to be there for the kids. And she felt if she continued her lifestyle, she'd end up behind bars.

She searched for an inner peace and found it in God, she says. She became born again and joined Healing Temple Pentecostal Church in Pompano Beach in 1984. That turned her around, she says.

Since then, she has been known to call the police on her own children when she suspected them of stealing. She has tipped off police about neighborhood drug dealers, too, until they move on.

Her transformation happened too late to make an impression on her daughter, Beverly, though. Cooper sent Rawls to a drug rehabilitation program twice and got her a job as a maid in a Boca Raton hotel, but she continued to use crack.

Raising her grandchildren is like having a second chance, she says.

At 6 a.m. on school days, Robert Cooper, 56, her husband of 21 years, wakes up to make sure his grandchildren get to school on time. Then Frankie rolls out of bed, sometimes so tired that she'll wear different shoes on each foot.

She is the motor that keeps the Cooper house running.

On school days, she irons outfits and rushes kids out of the bathroom so they won't miss the bus.

Like an assembly line, the girls wait as Grandma brushes their hair, coats it with hair oil, then fastens a barrette around it, making a neat ball.

If a strand of hair is out of place, she starts over.

``Without her, we'd probably be on the streets,'' says Jonathan Rawls, 13, as he waits for his turn in the bathroom.

When the children are finally off to school and the house is quiet -- except for the hum of the washing machine -- Cooper rests in her chestnut rocking chair, brushing her own hair.

With so many children to dress, the washer runs nonstop and the clothesline is always full.

For dinner, she cooks meals that will stretch: ham, turkey, whole chickens, and vats of beans in a cauldron she calls the 1,000 Man Bean Pot. She named the pot after the Million Man March.

Both Cooper and her husband are not working because of poor health. She has high blood pressure. He has arthritis. The family makes ends meet with food stamps, clothing donations and Social Security. Six of the 10 kids don't have medical coverage. The household of 12 survives on less than $30,000 a year.

In recent days, Cooper spends her afternoons searching for a place to live where her children won't see drug dealers on the corner. She circles newspaper ads and watches homes flash across the TV screen. But every time she calls to check on a rental and mentions she has 10 children, she gets a rejection.

``I wish I could read and write like other women, so I don't have to rely on the government,'' Cooper said. ``That's why I tell my children I want them to get an education. I take care of them so they can study.''

Shanika, 16, and Robert, 15, have lived with their grandmother since birth. Jonathan, 13, came next. He gets fighting mad when kids at school laugh about his mom in jail. Then, Elishia, 12, and David, 11.

Latalia, 10, was awarded to Cooper when she was 3 days old. When Cooper got the child, ants had bitten her cheek so badly the state declared her mother's project home unfit for a baby.

Antoniqua, 9, was next to move in, then Shamelle, 8.

``When we got Shamelle in 1987, she was full of cocaine,'' Cooper recalled. ``She would cry all the time. I wasn't going to take her at first, but I thought one more wouldn't hurt.''

Then came Beverly, 7, who sucks her thumb like it's peppermint candy. She was born in prison while Rawls was jailed on a cocaine charge. She weighed 1 pound, 1 ounce, and was about the length of a letter-sized envelope.

Wide-eyed Portia was the last child to come.

With a firm voice -- and a white leather belt that sits on the coffee table as a reminder that sassiness is not tolerated -- Cooper has managed to keep them out of trouble.

They all have chores. They attend church regularly, and they sing in the choir. Shamelle, Antoniqua, Robert and Portia have made the honor roll. Some have aspirations of going to college.

Cooper tells them that their mother loves them, but she made a mistake and has to pay for it. Last summer, they visited Rawls in prison.

Today, on Mother's Day, the family will go to church, and Frankie Cooper will be showered with hugs, kisses and stories about gifts her grandchildren wish they could buy for her.