Cyril Robson Cooper - Chapter 2

Before you read on, you have to, have to, HAVE to start with either reading this background Blip or rereading it if you have read it before.

READ HERE


Have you read it?
Promise?
Now read on.

I stuck at that point for a long time but then had a breakthrough.

Using a site called a billiongraves. com, I found a memorial to Alexia, wife of Cyril Cooper (He predeceased her) and it mentioned both Cyril's name and that of a daughter, Noelle.

So now I could return to the digitised newspaper archives and search again.
I found Noelle's engagement party, on her 21st birthday (giving me her birth date) and her subsequent marriage to Neville Greenwood. So now I had her married name!

Once again I hit a brick wall for quite some time.

But in the meantime, I approached a man in the same area with the same surname. He is not a relation but stepped up the challenge too and created a family tree on Wikitree of the family using the data I had found.

He also approached the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABC in the Victoria area and I was contacted and interviewed about my research and the task at hand.
It was in the afternoon drive time show with Nicole Chvastek and they subsequently put the interview on their Facebook page, together with a little video I made.(ABC Stateside Drive Victoria)

Then they interviewed me again, as a relation had heard the first interview and phoned in. His grandfather and Cyril were brothers!
Who knew I would become a Radio Star?
However he did not know anything about the direct descendent(s) that I was looking for.
Once again, many hours of research went by without any progress, tearing out the hair I do not have.

But then - a major breakthrough when I found the granting of probate in the estate of Neville Greenwood, Cyril's son in law, with a key date.

I followed this up and found in the archives of The Sydney Morning Herald, a sad death notice of Neville.

But it gave me the names of his sons, i.e the grandsons of Cyril. I will call the RG and BG.

Now I felt I was nearly there with this major step forward.
I was hunting real, live people.

I turned to that other great world wide resource - Facebook.

I sent messages to likely individuals with same name, citing the ABC link to give me some credibility and not come over as a prankster, hoaxer or fraudster.

Can you imagine...
my joy, elation, euphoria when one morning I received this email from RG?

"You have found one of the grandsons of Cyril Cooper, married to Alexia , my mother was Noelle and father Neville Greenwood both deceased.
Thank you for contacting me.
My family does hold Cyril’s memory dear and we are proud of the memories of his time fighting overseas."


And

"I  have had Cyril's photo with his medals in a frame on my wall for many, many years"


From New Zealand!

Eureka!

I contacted ABC and they interviewed him while I was on hold, and the next day, I was on air again.

I subsequently phoned him and we have exchanged emails.
Now all I have to do is either send the item to him, or we have to meet....
Way back, I set myself a target of 25 December 2018 to find a descendent- 100 years after the date in the drawing.

The hand over will be Chapter 3.

Thank you for reading all this, I hope you found it interesting.