Roberta 'Poo' Coker - cheering on her corner of the wood

Somewhere in the past seven decades, Poo lost the “h” on her name, but she gained rooms full of friends along the way.

She is a woman whose name - though not the one given to her at birth - stands alone in Eastern Jackson County. Say the single-syllable moniker, and no one questions to whom you are referring because countless civic and nonprofit organizations have experienced the work of Poo throughout the years.

She says she owes all the credit to one obscure job advertisement that appeared in The Examiner more than 30 years ago.



WHY POO?

No one really knows who Roberta Coker is. Instead, they simply know “Poo.”

She gained the nickname as a young child from “Winnie the Pooh.” By the time she was in school, even the teachers referred to a young Roberta as “Poo.”

And as an adult, it stayed.

“My bosses all called me 'Poo,'” she says. “That's what I know.”

Poo's family moved to Raytown when she was about 8. Poo's father was an Air Force pilot, and her parents divorced when she was young. As the oldest child, Poo says, she can remember hearing cheers and seeing the lights of Raytown high school football games near her home.

“I thought, 'Man, I can hardly wait to get to high school 'cause that would be so fun,'” says Poo, a 1959 Raytown High School graduate.

And, it was, she says. She was a Raytown High School cheerleader, and that mentality has stayed with her.

“I've probably been a cheerleader my whole life,” Poo says, “just advocating for something. I think it's my innate cheerleading nature to be trying to do something or to be cheerleading for something.”

Poo attended college in Warrensburg, earned a major in communications and journalism, got married and had two children, but she “didn't do much,” she says. As a stay-at-home mother, she did serve as president of the Junior Service League, an organization for women who aim to provide human and financial resources to enrich the lives of others in Eastern Jackson County.

Then, in 1978, a generic advertisement in The Examiner caught Poo's attention. Her children were in high school at that time, and an unspecified institution was looking for someone “to do some things,” she remembers.

“Well, I can do those things,” Poo says of her mindset. She thought the institution might be a bank or a hospital.

Instead, it was the Independence School District. Poo answered the blind advertisement, and the school district responded.

When she returned from running an errand, one of Poo's children told her that the school board had called. “Good grief, what did you guys do?” she remembers as her response to her children.

She got the job, which the school district had only intended as a part-time public relations gig. While working, Poo says, she felt the motivation to earn her master's degree, a feat she completed in the mid-1980s.

Technology was relatively young in those days. Throughout the 1970s, several school district bond issues had been defeated, bringing about a great deal of unrest, Poo says. With the hiring of Superintendent Robert Henley, she says, an effort for more community involvement began in developing relationships with the city of Independence, the Independence Chamber of Commerce and other organizations.

“As we went along, we kind of made the rules and tested the rules,” Poo says.

When Poo started working for the school district, two women were assistant superintendents and there were a few female principals, so top female leaders within the organization weren't unheard of.

Still, Poo says of being a woman in a position of power, “I think you just have to do your job maybe a little harder.

“I could see where that job could go, and so that's when we went from part-time to full-time,” Poo says of her role as director of community relations, which became full-time in 1979, a year after her hiring. It was designed as a part-time job, but Poo told her superiors that the job required a full 40-hour work week.

In the 1980s, Henley told her, “We don't have a fourth grade textbook.” Missouri history is taught in fourth grade, and the book used at that time had minimal information about Independence.

So, Poo and David Rock, director of elementary education, set out to coordinate a fourth grade supplemental textbook on Independence.

With the assistance of community members and organizations, the school district and Landmark Editions Inc. first published “Independence: The Queen City of the Trails” in October 1986. The book provides a history of Independence from early Indian settlement to modern city happenings in the 1980s.

But throughout her nearly 30 years with the district, Poo says, “kids were kids” and teachers worked hard. Besides interacting with media requests, Poo also coordinated the district's internal and external communications and organized events. She attended Board of Education meetings, ensuring members' needs were met.

“I don't mean 'I,'” she says quickly. “Like for events, I didn't do everything. I didn't clean the building - well, once I did.”

Even with her role in helping to pass 10 bond and tax levy issues, Poo steers clear of seeking credit. According to Judy Forrester, a past president of the Junior Service League who also worked with Poo in the school district, Poo often passes on recognition for her efforts.

“It's very difficult for her to do that,” Forrester says of Poo seeking credit. “She always wants to give someone else credit for the accomplishment.”

HER LATEST

Poo pulls her day planner off of a side table and flips it open to February. Every day, it appears, has an appointment or a task that she needs to accomplish - and a large coffee stain encircles all the tasks: a NorthWest Communities Development Corporation meeting, a haircut appointment and a vacation in Florida.

“This is like a retired calendar - duh,” she says. “I think I'm retired until I look at my calendar.”

Last fall, she contracted with the Independence Parks and Recreation Department to facilitate the Palmer Center's application for accreditation through the National Institute of Senior Centers, which is a bragging right that is held only by Blue Springs' Vesper Hall in a four-state area. The application has a projected completion date of July.

“I think what we've found is that the services for the seniors are so amazing,” Poo says. “It's just a good part-time job. I just thought it was a challenge and something I could do.”

Patty Schumacher, a former Independence School District associate superintendent, met Poo - “a dynamo and energetic,” Schumacher says - in 1988. Poo served as a mentor for Schumacher as she got acquainted with Independence.

“What a mentor, when you look at the track record of what she's done,” says Schumacher, who also is a past chairwoman of the chamber board. “Little did I know what she would go on to accomplish.”

Poo is the first and only woman to serve as president of the Independence Rotary Club. The Truman Heartland Community Foundation named her as Citizen of the Year in 1996, and two years later, she received the Independence chamber's Distinguished Service Award.

“I've just watched her do all of this stuff, and she never slows down,” Schumacher says. “And she knows everyone. Everyone. I think she's been chair of just about everything.”

Schumacher and Poo also have traveled together throughout the years, including a trip to China and Japan in 2004. When they visited the Great Wall of China, the tour director told the women that the route to the left was the most challenging. Schumacher asked Poo which direction she wanted to travel.

Left, of course.

“We wanted to say we did it, and we wanted to say we did it the hard way,” Schumacher says. “She was right there with me along the way, and she encouraged me the whole time.”

Poo also serves on the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, an organization that aims to provide leadership, advocacy and resources to promote quality health for the uninsured and underserved throughout the metropolitan region. In 2009, she served as chairwoman of the Truman Heartland Community Foundation board of directors.

“I guess I'm just not a shy person,” Poo says, laughing.

Last summer, however, Poo had her right knee replaced, a surgery she says has forced her to slow down in her community commitments.

“I just thought, 'Maybe it's time to let some other people take a turn,'” she says of her resignations from the boards of the Raytown Historical Society and Horizon Academy and the Independence Mayor's Christmas Concert committee, as well as smaller roles within Rotary Club and Junior Service League. “I don't think I'm 70, but I am.

“It's kind of a recognition that you're not 25 anymore,” Poo says of her knee replacement. “It was a bigger deal that I thought it was going to be. It's just a reminder of what you are.”



CLEAR-EYED WISDOM

When the Raytown Schools Alumni Hall of Fame inducted Poo in 2005, she was described as “an icon within the community of Independence,” a person whose “work has touched countless lives.”

Like Winnie the Pooh, Poo Coker seems to embrace the importance of happiness and the feelings of her friends. She lives alone, also like Pooh Bear, but the two always surround themselves with others.

Winnie the Pooh has been described as “gifted with an uncommon, clear-eyed wisdom,” and Poo's friends would probably agree with that description for their female friend.

Instead of answering questions about her own life, Poo jokingly begins the conversation by noting that she would rather be the one asking questions. It was this reporter-like instinct that led to “The News at Poo Corner,” a society column that ran in The Examiner from 1999 to 2004.

She had worked on newspapers in college and in Raytown, and Poo says the journalistic style of writing appeals to her.

“I'm not much of a flowery writer,” Poo says, allowing her sense of humor to shine through. “'The chicken crossed the street' works instead of 'The fluffy chicken toddle-woddled across the darkened, paved street.'”

“Few people are as familiar with the Independence community and involved in as many projects as Roberta Coker, known as 'Poo' to her circle of friends, which includes just about everybody,” read the Editor's Note in December 1999 announcing Poo's new column.

“Everywhere I went, all I did was listen,” Poo says, adding that she's always had a full social calendar with her civic involvement. “I really liked writing about people that not everybody knew, not the same people every week, doing the same thing.”

Judy Forrester says Poo is filled with a boundless energy and an ability to remember peoples' names.

“She never sees a stranger,” Forrester says. “When you go anyplace with her, she knows everyone in the room. She's always introducing you to someone, and she makes everyone feel comfortable.”

Forrester and Poo also served as co-chairwomen of the Independence chamber's 90th annual banquet in January. In 1997, Poo became the second female chairwoman of the chamber's board of directors.

When the current chamber offices were built in the mid-1990s, Mary Nesselrode's mother used to drive by and say, “There is Poo's building.”

“She rated pretty high in our family,” says Mary Nesselrode, Poo's close friend of 45 years. “Mother was very proud of Poo, also.”

Poo understands that every organization has an event, most of which take place on weekends, and she used to be a reliable, recognizable face at all of them. This year, however, Poo has decided she needs to say “no” more often, adding that she turned down several requests to serve on committees or boards.

“What I'm hoping is that maybe just a year or two of not doing so much, I'll get a little re-energized and back in the swing of things - or maybe I won't,” she says.

Prairie Village, Kan., resident Nesselrode has known Poo since they were neighbors in Kansas City near the former Blue Ridge Mall.

“Every time I go to the hospital, she has been there,” Nesselrode says of her past battle with breast cancer. “When things have occurred - any crisis or anything that occurred - she's always been there and continues to be.”

The women often spent Christmas Eve and other holidays gathered together at each others' homes and took canoe trips. Nesselrode cannot recall the exact moment that she met Poo; instead, their relationship just formed naturally and instantly.

“We talk, and we check on each other since we're both alone,” Nesselrode says, laughing, saying she had already spoken to Poo several times on a recent Thursday. “I guess sisters do that, too.”

Today, Poo's constant companion in life is her 11-year-old sheltie, Lily.

“I think if you don't have a sense of humor, it's just a drab life,” says Poo, adding that she watched the televised Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in February - with Lily - and laughed at the competing dogs.

“They were just so funny,” Poo says. “I sat here, and I thought to myself, 'You must be hard up for laughing; you were laughing at a dog.'”

She credits her group of friends for her successes, many of whom have stood by her side since their high school days. Poo says life is about surrounding yourself with positive people who share belief systems similar to your own.

“I'm not about shopping and foo-foo things. I'd rather spend my day, I guess, at a board meeting giving money to somebody than worrying about some other things that are not in my interest level.”

And as Poo approaches the April 6 celebration of her 70th birthday, one of her granddaughters, age 7, recently asked, “Grandma Poo, do you have a real name?”

Poo laughed. “Yes, it's Roberta.”

Perhaps it is ironic that Poo's real name, Roberta, is the feminine form of Robert, meaning “bright with fame.” After all, she was just a woman who answered a newspaper advertisement and sought no credit in return.

“I always tried to do what I said I would do,” Poo says. “I don't know if my story is worth anything. I was just at the right place at the right time.”