Cooper Grocery Co. & Delivery Truck

Cooper Grocery Co. and Delivery Truck. . , A Waco Success Story , The building on the north side of the courtyard is the remaining portion of the Cooper Grocery Company. Arriving in Waco in 1875 from North Carolina, Madison Alexander Cooper, Sr. worked a variety of jobs in Waco until he saved enough to purchase the Moore Brothers Grocery Company located at 4th Street and Mary Avenue in 1892. Incorporated in 1897, it became the Cooper Grocery Co. Its success turned the Coopers into one of the wealthiest families in Waco. The spice and coffee mill located in a concrete portion of the building survives today as an upholstery company. In 2004 the Dr Pepper Museum repainted the green and gold Cooper Grocery Company and Coffee-Spices lettering., A Better Place to Live , Today the Cooper name is still present in the Waco community through The Cooper Foundation that Madison Cooper, Jr. established in 1943 as a memorial to his parents. Over the years, The Cooper Foundation has contributed approximately $22 million to fulfill Madison Jr.'s wish to "make Waco a better or more desirable place to live in." Today the Dr Pepper Museum stands as a testimony to his dream, having received grants from The Cooper Foundation for improvement and expansion of the museum's facilities., Special Delivery , Also in the courtyard is the 1953 Chevrolet truck donated to the museum by the Wales Industrial Service Company. It was restored and painted by MAACO to look like a 1940s delivery truck. The beverage body on the bed of the truck is an original that was acquired by the Dr Pepper Museum from AB-Tex Beverage, the Dr Pepper distributor for Abilene, Texas. Vehicles of this type held cases of full Dr Pepper bottles to be delivered to grocery stores, convenience stores and other locations that sold Dr Pepper. The truck and beverage body were restored in 2004 and displayed in the courtyard., Captions , (Photo #1) Above: Madison Cooper, Jr. authored Sironia, Texas, a novel about a fictional town in Texas in the early 1900s. Cooper earned the 1952 Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award. The novel spent 11 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Image courtery of the Texas Collection, Baylor University , (Photo #2) BELOW: The front of Cooper Grocery at the corner of 4th and Mary. Image courtery of the Texas Collection, Baylor University , (Photo #3) LEFT: Waco's Dr Pepper delivery fleet was decimated by the 1953 tornado. Photography by Clint Field , (Photo #4) BELOW: This fleet was part of the operations of the Greensboro Dr Pepper Bottling Company in North Carolina in March 1951.