Bertha D Cooper

Bertha was born and raised in Seattle WA long before Microsoft and Amazon. She earned a BSN degree in nursing (University of WA) and entered the profession the same year as Medicare, a coincidence destined to define her career in non-traditional ways. She began her career in public health and was moved into a management position early in her career which proved to be the beginning of a long career in management and administration in an expanding array of health care delivery innovations. She served in public health, home health, long-term care, hospice and acute care. Every one of those positions involved quality, safety and effective health care for the elderly. She became a reasonable voice and passionate advocate for patient-centered services across the continuum of care.

Writing was part of each of Bertha’s professional roles; she wrote to inform, educate and persuade. When she started into her own experience with aging, she realized she had questions about natural aging compared to pathological aging which dominated her professional work. She combined her curiosity about aging and passion for writing in an on and off ten-year quest that resulted in the book, Women, We’re Only Old Once, Keep What You Can, Let Go of What You Can’t, Enjoy What You Have! released October 5, 2020 by MSI Press.

MSI Press gave her another writing opportunity to write a short book on managing during the pandemic. Staying in character, she wrote Old and On Hold, Aging in Place during the Pandemic, which was released June 23, 2020.

Bertha has been a featured columnist for The Sequim Gazette, a local weekly newspaper published by Sound Publishing for over seven years. Her column appears every other week..