Nora Cooney of Lonoke has a love for children that led her to be a preschool teacher, a worker at a shelter for children and now a foster parent.
“At the end of the day, somebody genuinely has to care about children and love them,” she said.
Cooney was recently honored as the Arkansas Foster Parent of the Year for Area 7 by the Arkansas Department of Human Services. Area 7 includes the counties of Lonoke, Prairie, Jefferson, Grant, Dallas, Cleveland, Lincoln, Calhoun and Bradley.
“To me, it was an honor because, first of all, someone thought enough about me,” she said. “Not that I’m boastful, but I just felt like somebody saw that I was trying to make a difference. That really blessed my soul.”
Cooney said she wasn’t aware that this award existed before she was notified that she was the recipient.
“Now that I know, I’ve got a few other families that I might nominate,” she said. “I received this award for all the foster parents. I was glad I had this opportunity. It made me feel special for a day. It was nice. The way I felt special, I want a child to feel special also.”
Family and her belief in God have always been important to Cooney.
“It always has been and always will be,” she said. “I spent over 25 years with Head Start. I’ve worked with the Open Arms Shelter. That really enlightened me on my new journey of being a foster parent.”
Cooney is a member of the Lonoke Apostolic Church.
“Brother John Tackett has been so supportive of me,” she said. “I can’t thank him enough.”
Cooney, 56, has been a foster parent for about three years.
“In a sense, I was a foster parent while working at the Open Arms Shelter,” she said. “I went to the shelter. I lived with those kids. It’s just a reverse effect. Me being a foster parent and going to the children’s home, and now the children are coming to me to have more one-on-one time.”
Cooney currently fosters four children.
“It’s just trying to help them deal with life and be motivated and just try to get them where they need to be, sometimes in a short period of time. With teenagers, you just have a little window of time. When they are 18, who knows where they are going.”
Cooney said being a foster parent is spiritual to her.
“So many times, people do not know what they want to do in life,” she said. “I remember as a young child, while all the other kids were playing, I’d be talking to older people all the time. At that point, I always knew I wanted to do something with children.
“It’s rewarding because I feel like I’m making a fulfillment to a dream. A lot of times, we have dreams of doing something. I feel like I’ve made a complete circle. Even though [being a foster parent] has its challenges, I still feel like I’m trying and hoping to make a difference in a child’s life to show them a better way of life.”
Cooney said she’s not ashamed to let the world know that she loves Jesus.
“People followed him,” she said. “He never made it boastful. I just do what I do. I got into foster parenting for the right reasons. The right reason is to choose to help a child. Sometimes, that’s not easy.”
Cooney was nominated for the award by Nina Shelton, who has children who attend Head Start in Lonoke.
“I nominated her because I feel like she’s an example in the community,” Shelton said of Cooney. “I noticed her years ago. She was working for the shelter and Head Start. I just saw how much time and love she was giving to the children in our community. It caught my eye. I learned more about her. She was a single woman who was basically dedicating her whole life to serving God and serving children.”
Cooney, 56, is a native of Carlisle. She graduated from Carlisle High School in 1981. She attended several colleges, including the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas Tech University in Russellville and Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock. She earned an associate degree in early child care.
“I was born and raised in Carlisle, Arkansas,” she said. “I’m a true black-and-gold Bison fan. I live in Lonoke, but I’m always a Bison first. That’s no offense to Lonoke.”
After Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, Cooney went to Washington, D.C., where she served as a nanny for the children of Rodney Slater, who was the U.S. secretary of transportation in the Clinton administration.
“That was really enlightening, just to get out of Arkansas,” Cooney said. “I found a love for Washington. Once my mom got sick, I had to return home to take care of my mom. I took care of her until the day she died [1995], just like I did with my father.”
Cooney never married and has no children of her own. She had a hysterectomy because of a tumor, but that didn’t keep her from wanting to work with children. In the late 1990s, Cooney had a battle with a staph infection, which basically took a year away from her life.
“I was left completely open,” she said. “I had to have home-care nurses come three times a day to make sure I was OK and to do what they call a wet-dry vac to make sure I didn’t have any scar tissue inside me.”
Cooney said that experience gave her a deeper revelation and a closer relationship with God.
“I had to do some deep meditating because I refused to take a lot of pain medication,” she said. “I’m glad I refused because I see too many people hooked today on pain medications.”
Cooney said she got involved with foster parenting through The CALL (Children of Arkansas Loved for a Lifetime), an organization that helps people “become foster parents, adoptive parents or volunteers by breaking down barriers to get started or take the first step,” states The CALL’s website.
“They’ll have places where you can go and get information,” Cooney said. “During that time, they will present you with the process of The CALL, and you can make the choice to join that night at a meeting or wait until later. That is how I started the process. It’s just something I wanted to do and just help out.”
Cooney said being a foster parent has it challenges.
“The kids sometimes have huge attitudes because some of them have been damaged to the point that they don’t trust anyone,” she said. “That’s really hard to do. Some of them are very disrespectful. You give them everything that you can. The reason they have these feelings is sometimes maybe a feeling of resentment. ‘Why did my mom not do this? Why did my dad not do this?’
“It’s difficult. I can’t speak for anyone else. Nora Cooney will be herself. Nora Cooney loves God. I’m not ashamed to tell it. I want for kids to learn how to be respectful and be disciplined. That is what I do, whether they like it or not.”
Cooney said that when she was notified that she had received the area award for Foster Parent of the Year, her children were excited for her.
“They have to know that you love them,” she said. “It’s not going to happen overnight, but the reward is seeing a child look at you and say, ‘I love you, Ms. Nora.’ When they found out I was the Foster Parent of the Year, they’d go around saying, ‘She’s the Foster Parent of the Year. I want to be a foster parent when I grow up.’
“For them to say that, it means something.”
Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.