By JOHN MARTIN
Staff Writer
An arrangement of flowers from Teresita Hooper's garden was still in full bloom in her kitchen Saturday.
After cutting them Friday afternoon, Mrs. Hooper, 61, went to her bedroom for a nap. She died there Friday, Nov. 14, 2003, of heart failure, apparently in her sleep.
Funeral services will be at 3 this afternoon at Sidon Methodist Church, where she was a member. Visitation starts at 2 p.m. at the church. The Rev. Wilson Ray will officiate, with the Rev. Don Newton assisting. Wilson & Knight Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
The garden was a hobby Mrs. Hooper took up more avidly this year after closing Travel-Eze, the travel agency she owned and ran for 22 years, her stepdaughter, Chriss Howard, says. It gave her something to do when she wasn't helping her husband, former Leflore County Supervisor James Hooper, who has cancer.
"She loved to work in her flower beds," Howard recalled. "She had every kind imaginable, and she didn't like anything too ordered. She just liked it to be natural."
Mrs. Hooper raised flowers with the same vigor that marked everything she did, and there was always a bustle of activity around her, family and friends say.
"She just had a zest for life," said her longtime friend and walking partner, Ann Gray of Sidon.
A native of Minas, Uruguay, Mrs. Hooper spoke four languages. She served on the advisory board for the Leflore County Salvation Army and was active in the Delta Garden Club. As a member of LeBonte Women's Club, she kept the group's cancer loan closet at her travel agency, providing medical supplies for cancer patients long before her husband came down with the illness.
Mrs. Hooper wasn't the one her family was worried about. Always full of energy, she had been on a cleaning frenzy over the past week.
"She's been painting in the house," Howard said. "It's unbelievable the things she's done here recently. She's got nervous energy, you know, so she goes and does it."
The impromptu flower arrangement wasn't the only reminder of Mrs. Hooper around her Sidon home Saturday. The stoneware, pottery and leather items she collected from her native country, were still there too, Howard said.
But her death left a silence once occupied by her accent, which years in Leflore County didn't dilute.
"She never lost it," said Gray. "Especially on the phone, it was hard to know what she was saying sometimes, but she didn't mind repeating it."
Mrs. Hooper came to Leflore County from Uruguay more than 30 years ago as an exchange teacher at Amanda Elzy High School, where she taught Spanish. She spoke French and some Portuguese, too, according to Howard.
With her proficiency for foreign languages and a passion for knowing other cultures, Mrs. Hooper opened Travel-Eze in 1980. She traveled extensively, leading trips to London, Hong Kong and Mexico, among other destinations. At least once a year, she and her husband would go to Piriapolis, Uruguay, where they had a house.
Whenever she was gone, her assistant Barbara Williams would keep the travel agency going.
"For a long time, about 12 years, it was just the two of us, so when she wasn't there I had to be there, and when I wasn't there she was," Williams said.
The two kept in touch after the agency closed New Year's Eve. Williams came by the Hooper's house on Wednesday afternoon, and Mrs. Hooper was as blithe as ever, she said.
"I stayed about two hours with them," Williams said. "She was always playing jokes and making little fun things happen, and that's the way she was Wednesday."
When Mrs. Hooper's son, Cesar, called Gray's house Friday afternoon with the news of his mother's death, Gray thought it might be one of those jokes.
"I said, 'I wonder if Teresa is playing with them.' And when I got there, she wasn't," Gray said. "Maybe she had lain down to go to sleep. I will always wonder what happened to her."
Mrs. Hooper is survived also by a stepson, Jim Hooper III of Wasilla, Alaska; two sisters, Martha Sarubbi and Gloria Manzor Agresta both of Uruguay; a brother Jorge Manzor of Uruguay; four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
