Prayer Board Requests - How to pray for your City I like this

Gene Cooper is dedicated to helping everyone in Lodi and Stockton find salvation through God and Jesus Christ. And Cooper, 62, just does it in a most public way.

On most Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays beginning at 11 a.m., Cooper spends an entire hour kneeling at the northeast corner of School and Oak streets near the post office.

He does the same thing from 2 to 3 p.m. on the same days at Hammer Lane and Lower Sacramento Road in Stockton.

"I'm praying for the salvation of Lodi and Stockton," said Cooper, a Stockton resident. "There's a lot of people who don't know the Lord; I'm not in a big hurry to let people go to hell."

And hell is the destination Cooper believes that anyone who doesn't acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior is headed.

Cooper said he prays outside rain or shine, unless it is just too wet or cold. Then he will pray at home for the same period of time. Sometimes he prays out loud; other times, he prays silently.

Cooper said he started praying in public one day a week about two years ago.

"It was a fight; I didn't want to do it," Cooper said. "It's not an easy thing to do, kneel down on a sidewalk. I just really felt the Lord wanted me to do it."

Cooper said he gets a variety of reactions.

"I get people cussing at me," he said. "I get people who are really nice. People will bring me sodas. I've had nurses grab my hand and ask, 'Am I all right?'"

One time, a couple of nurses took his pulse and asked if he'd had a stroke, a gesture Cooper described as "really sweet."

"I've only had one person tell me, 'Praying is worthless,'" Cooper said. "More people have said, 'Please pray for us. We need it.'"

The comment that praying is worthless was the only reaction Cooper said he has received from a non-Christian.

A Vietnam veteran, Cooper is fully disabled from Agent Orange, said his pastor, Chan Keith of Westside Assembly in Lodi.

"Gene's a real good guy," Keith said. "Gene's a guy who decided to be a victor and not a victim. He accomplished that through his faith in Christ."

Cooper is often in enormous pain, but he hasn't allowed it to rule his life, Keith said.

"I had a battery blow up in my face (in Vietnam)," Cooper said.

He also had his back broken three times during his 17-year career in the Army, which included tours of duty in Vietnam in 1966-67 and in 1970-71. Cooper retired with full disability in 1977.

Cooper said he found the Lord during his Army career.

"I found that out in 'Nam," he said. "There's no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole."

As much as he's devoted to his prayer schedule in Lodi, Cooper will be gone the next two weeks. The mountains are beckoning.

"It's time to get away from the concrete jungle," he said.

Copper is married and his wife, Bonnie, is the secretary to the chairperson of the Fine Arts Division at San Joaquin Delta College.

Gene Cooper has two children from a previous marriage, Peter Cooper and Elizabeth Honeycutt, both from Texas. Bonnie Cooper has a daughter from a previous marriage, Karen Cooper of Stockton. The Coopers have two grandchildren.

So, which city, Lodi or Stockton, needs the greater salvation?

"Both," Cooper replied. "One is just bigger than the other."