A little background about this Gordon Cooper. I moved with my family to Watkins Glen, N.Y., when I was 3 years old. After graduating from Watkins Glen High School in 1983, I attended Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y. and then began a career in electrical engineering while also serving for 20 years in the U.S. Army Reserve, including deployments to Bosnia and Kosovo as a public affairs officer. In 2002, I started Preston Woods Publishing to promote books of regional interest. In 2009, I published my first book, Watkins Glen Tour Guide. I currently live in Northern California with my wife and sons.
In 1997, my Army Reserve unit — the 300th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment from Atlanta, GA — got deployed to Bosnia as a part of a NATO peacekeeping mission. I kept a journal to remember the experience.
While my name is Gordon Cooper. I am NOT the famous astronaut Gordo Cooper — whose real name incidentally was Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr. — nor was I named after him. I suppose the older I get, the less relevant that comparison is. There are a lot of Gordon Coopers out there, but thanks to Leroy we all fall pertty far down the list of results if you were to google the name. Nevertheless, I was fond enough of the name to grab the URL in the late 1990s.