Rose Cooper recently completed 32 years employment with the Wilmington News Journal and Star Republican. She is presently the county editor at the News Journal. She has provided coverage every year at the Clinton County Fair, taking pictures, writing stories, and gathering results. She has covered all facets of the county fair.

In addition, though the years she has covered council meetings for the city of Wilmington and all of the villages, as well as school board meetings at each of the schools in the county and the county commissioners. She provided coverage during the big Xenia tornado, a number of tornados that have hit Clinton Country, several plane crashes and train derailments.

She now regularly covers the Blanchester village council and the Blanchester Board of Education, Clinton County Sheriff’s Office, Wilmington Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol as well as general assignment coverage of stories, events and photography.

Rose has had stories and photos on the Associated Press wire that have gone across the country. She also has had stories published in a number of national magazines. One of the stories, with a sidebar, was published in a national law enforcement magazine. The stories were about a triple fatality in Clinton County in the early 1980s for which Bob Mathews of Sabina, a trooper at that time with the Wilmington Post of the Ohio Highway Patrol, received the Ohio Award of Valor for his bravery in trying to save the lives of two of the victims. He then received the National Award of Valor for his bravery.

A wrap-up story and photographs of the Clinton County Corn Festival was published in the Corn Magazine out of New York in the early 80s.

She and her husband Owen L. “Buck” Cooper have three children, Tamara Wilson of Alabama, and Dale Cooper and Jim Cooper, both of Xenia. They also have five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.