<table> </table> <em>The daughter tries to cheer her mom, describing how handsome her Pops would have looked with silver hair.</em></p><p><em> Days ago, she saw him that way in a dream, walking her down the wedding aisle, whispering how her husband better treat her right. LaRia Miller laughs as she tells it. </em></p><p><em> Then her smile flits away. Lots of missing him ahead: graduation, wedding, future grandkids?</em></p><p><em> Her voice, so strong before, chokes. Her mom breaks, too.</em></p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s really unfair,&#8221; says LaRia, who burns with anger. But the 21-year-old knows if her Pops were here now, he&#8217;d tell her anger doesn&#8217;t do anybody any good.</p><p>Darnell Cooper was killed Aug. 2, by a man he didn&#8217;t know. An angry man outside a bar, who sucker-punched the first guy he saw: Cooper.</p><p>But Cooper knew how to fight back. So the man drew his gun, killing the 44-year-old husband and father.</p><p>Cooper believed in second chances. He was kind. He didn&#8217;t finish high school, yet preached to his daughters about going to college.</p><p>And his daughters heard him.</p><p>LaRia Miller, 21, will graduate this year from the University of Missouri with dual degrees in international business and international studies. She is the first ever in their family to go to college. One other sister is in college and another is considering it.</p><p>Perhaps that will be the father&#8217;s legacy to his family. But there are other life lessons he&#8217;s taught, now, even in death.</p><p>Ten years ago, he showed his family how to forgive another killer when his 10-year-old daughter died from a drive-by shooting.</p><p>Forgiveness? Now? It&#8217;s too soon for that yet, say the women who loved him.</p><p>&#8220;I know I&#8217;m supposed to forgive (the shooter) but what he took from me&#8230; . There&#8217;s just a big hole here,&#8221; says Maria Cooper, his widow.</p><p>She dabs at her eyes. She&#8217;s angry, too. And she&#8217;s struggled with the whispers from others, the ones who assume a murder victim was up to no good. The disbelief from so many that someone could do nothing and still be killed.</p><p>That&#8217;s just something for people to fool themselves into thinking it won&#8217;t happen to them, she says.</p><p>&#8220;We were living right. It still happened.&#8221;</p><p>Early on, Darnell Cooper&#8217;s future loomed toward incarceration. He dropped out of school. His mother died when he was 16, while he was in a boys&#8217; home. His dad was killed a short time later.</p><p>With a string of traffic violations, including eluding a police officer and then a robbery, he lived a fast life. And his family suffered for it. But something made him try again.</p><p>In 1994 he met Maria, and the two began dating.</p><p>Then in 1998, his 10-year-old daughter from a previous love, Shanelle Cooper, was killed in a drive-by shooting. A picture in <em>The Star </em>shows him crying, talking to the community. Hundreds attended her funeral.</p><p>With all the history he knew of the streets, he struggled with how to react. Revenge was tempting. LaRia, just a child then herself, had never seen the easygoing man so angry. She and her sisters were watching him, learning from this father figure.</p><p>In his grief, a traffic violation broke his parole, sending him back to prison. His wife now believes it was a gift because &#8220;it gave him time to process his daughter&#8217;s death.&#8221;</p><p>In prison, life threw him another twist: Two cells away were the men charged in his own daughter&#8217;s slaying.</p><p>He called Maria.</p><p>&#8220;He told me, violence begets violence,&#8217;&#8221; she remembers. Cooper prayed hard, trying to ease his pain, trying to find the strength to forgive. He wrote letters saying how he wanted to live right, to have a wife, a family, to be normal.</p><p>The words convinced Maria to marry him in 2001.</p><p>They were happy. And she saw how crazy kind he was when it came to helping others. Once he came home and asked her to fix another plate for dinner. She looked out their front door and saw a homeless man standing there with a cart, waiting.</p><p>&#8220;His heart was big,&#8221; she says.</p><p>The house is so quiet now. Washing just <em>her </em>clothes. Eating meals alone. There will be a lifetime of sadness, remembering him.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not mad at God,&#8221; Maria says finally.</p><p>&#8220;I just wish we would have had more time.&#8221;