With the continued success of Pat's Book, 'Character is Destiny' Norman Wright from Choice Magazine met her in November 2006. This is what he wrote

Dick Cooper...
            Secret Agent

The Story of Dick Cooper is like reading about James Bond, Dick Barton, Beau Geste and Biggles rolled into one. The big difference is that Dick was real - and his true story makes those fictional heroes sound like reticent underachievers.

Choice reader Pat Hews realized her father Captain Dick Cooper was a true hero, a man with a record of adventure, action and courage that cannot have been surpassed. But as a man of integrity and modesty, he rarely spoke of his daring deeds.

It wasn't until after his death, aged 89, that Pat discovered the full extent of his amazing life of adventure as she sorted out his papers and found the background evidence id his incredible story. Pat felt the story should be told so, showing some courage herself, she wrote her fathers biography Character id Destiny, got it published, and worked hard to give it publicity. So this wonderful tale has been saved for posterity. It would have been a tragedy had it been lost.

For someone who had never written a published word before, Pat has created a pacy and exciting book which brings the bare facts alive with her interpretation of the emotions and characters involved. Mind you what material she had to work with!

Before he was ten, Dick Cooper had been captured and ransomed by Bedouin tribesmen, rescued from wolves in Turkey, wounded in the uprising of the Young Turks in Constantinople and became fluent in eight languages. His second decade was hardly less action-packed. He rebelled from schools in the Mediterranean and back home in Britain. He ended up in the French Foreign Legion and won the Croix de Guerre aged 15 at Gallipoli - it was recorded as the first ever to be awarded in the legion. 

Dick left the Legion and joined the British Army to fight in France for the last two years of the First World War. He rejoined the Legion and saw action in North Africa, where he won a second Croix de Guerre honor.

After serving his second engagement Dick made his way home to England where he became a civil servant and with his language skills ended up serving in the Continental Telephone service. 

One of his roles during the abdication crisis was to monitor King Edward V111's phone calls to Mrs. Simpson, by then out of the public gaze in France. That may have needed all his courage.

During the Second World War action soon found Dick. He was recruited by the Special Operations Executive and was sent into North Africa where he was captured and escaped from a PoW camp. He was parachuted into France and saw constant action as a secret agent.

His post-war life in the area of Kent was based around his family and his garden, although he still fought plenty of 'paper' battles for the rights of local groups and other groups of ex-servicemen.

That summary is just the skeleton of Dick's story. There are hundreds of other adventures interweaved into those bare bones.

In fact, there are so many that it almost sounds impossible - a fact that Pat acknowledges readily.

"I found documentation for all the facts in the book. It seems incredible but everything is true and has back-up papers like letters from his headmasters to his father," she said. Pat also has all her father's medals and his collections of papers and photographs, as well as many reactions to the book from friends and strangers. Many describe the tale as like something out of a boys own story. Pat has that one covered too. She has a 1937 copy of the The Wonder Book of Daring Deeds. The chapter 'A boy in the foreign Legion' is about her father's Croix de Guerre at 15.

"I wanted to write the story for the family as much as anything" said Pat. "My father was a stranger when he returned from the SOE service. But he was a marvelous father when he was home. A few people said I should get the book published and it has sold very well locally and is now available in bookshops and on www.amazon.co.uk I've been delighted by the reaction to the book." 

Pat and her husband John still live in the Romney Marsh area of Kent, not far from Brookland, the Village where her father lived.

After his death in 1998, the family created a rose garden at Brookland in his memory. How perfect for a true English hero to have his memory honored not just by medals and books of ripping yearns, but by the tranquility of the roses he loves to grow in the garden of England.

Norman Wright, Choice November 2006