Friends recall woman who inspired Obama

ATLANTA - Ann Nixon Cooper was remembered Monday as a charismatic woman who, after toiling through the civil rights era, lived to see herself hailed in an election night speech by the nation's first black president.

Some 550 people attended the funeral Monday in Atlanta for Cooper, who died Dec. 21 at age 107.

Cooper, a dentist's wife who raised four children, first grabbed the nation's attention last fall when Barack Obama singled her out as a point of inspiration for his historic presidential campaign. She had cast an early ballot for him just two weeks earlier.

"Tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can," Obama told the nation moments after his groundbreaking election.

At the funeral service, civil rights pioneer and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young recalled Cooper as a longtime friend who enjoyed her sudden popularity: He joked that she dumped him as her unofficial boyfriend when she caught the attention of a handsome, younger man - soon-to-be President Obama.

Young recalled a woman who was a repository of black history in Atlanta but who also loved high-heeled shoes, parties and aerobics