Glenn Powell Shoop

1920 - 2011

Glenn Powell Shoop of Dallas passed away peacefully in his sleep Sunday, April 24, 2011. He was 90. Graveside service: 10:30 a.m. Friday in Hillcrest Memorial Park in Dallas. Dr. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church of Dallas will officiate. Visitation: 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Sparkman/Hillcrest Funeral Home in Dallas. Honorary pallbearers will be Orville Rogers, Jack Morton, Jim Erwin, George Sibley, Don Chancellor and Bob Cox. Memorials: Lottie Moon Offering, through First Baptist Church of Dallas. He was a deacon, junior high boys' Sunday school teacher and Chapel Choir sponsor at First Baptist Church of Dallas. He was a rancher and farmer, and he loved the land. He served on the board of Justin State Bank for many years and became well-known to residents in Wise and Denton counties as a tough bargainer but a generous man of his word. And he loved to fly. As a pilot for the Army Air Corps in World War II and a captain for Braniff International Airlines for 34 years, Capt. Shoop was checked out on everything from the Piper Cub to the Concorde, from which he retired from flying in 1980. He was the first pilot to captain the supersonic plane in the U.S., and he often told his family that when he was offered the position, "I said, 'Yes,' before the question was finished." It was a fitting finale to a career he loved and for which he was well-suited. Capt. Shoop was born Sept. 1, 1920, in Gracemont, Okla., where he grew up racing bareback ponies with his friends along Sugar Creek, searching for arrowheads in the canyons, helping his father farm and trapping muskrats for pelts he sold for 25 cents each. He graduated second in his class ("of eight," he like to remind his children) from Gracemont High School in 1938. He attended the University of Oklahoma in Norman from 1938 to 1942, where he worked his way through school, holding several jobs at once, including working in a used furniture store, milking cows, feeding chickens, driving a delivery truck and serving as caretaker of a boardinghouse for students. He said his favorite job during those years was working for OU President Emeritus Dr. William Bennett Bizzell and his wife. They hired the young student to drive them on a vacation to New Orleans. "What a thrill to drive a brand new Packard," Capt. Shoop often said. He said the Bizzells taught him the social graces that "smoothed the way from the Oklahoma cotton fields to airline board meetings in Chicago." He also said it was Dr. Bizzell who introduced him to Tom Braniff. While at the University of Oklahoma, Capt. Shoop enrolled in a civilian pilot training program. He arrived at a grass airstrip in Norman every morning at dawn to practice takeoffs and landings before school. As World War II escalated, he left OU one semester short of a degree. He joined the Army Air Corps and was commissioned in 1943 as a first lieutenant, based with the Air Transport Command at Love Field. He attended First Baptist Church of Dallas, where he saw and fell in love with his wife, Louise. They met in Training Union, married March 19, 1943, and settled to raise their family in the Park Cities in Dallas. He often told Louise that she never had any competition until he met the Concorde. After Braniff's demise in the early 1980s, Capt. Shoop, with other retired pilots, approached Jay Pritzker, owner of the Hyatt Corp., to see if he wanted to buy an airline. He did, and Capt. Shoop served on the Braniff board of directors in the years following. He was also a member of the Braniff International Silver Eagles. In 2006, the University of Oklahoma recognized his accomplishments with the OU Regents' Award, "in acknowledgement of demonstrated leadership throughout his life." Capt. Shoop loved his family, his friends, flying and farming. But one stanza of "The Vision of Sir Launfal," by James Russell Lowell, which Capt. Shoop recited often, revealed that he knew where his real blessing lay: "For a cap and bells our lives we pay, bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking. 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 'tis only God that may be had for the asking." He was preceded in death by his parents, Roy A. and Myrtle Goodfellow Shoop, and his wife of 61 years, Louise Vollmer Shoop. Survivors: Sister, Joyce Shoop Jones of Illinois; his children, Merilou Shoop Love of South Padre Island, Paul Shoop and wife, Lee, of Malibu, Calif., and Nancy Shoop Jeffery and husband, Estel Jeffery, of Little Rock, Ark.; grandchildren, Aaron Shoop, Tyler Shoop, Preston Love and wife, Shannon, Luke Love and wife, Jill, Jordan Caver, Tristan Caver, Taylor Shoop, Evan Shoop, Madison Shoop and Logan Shoop; and great-grandchildren, David Roberts, Audrey Love, Noah Roberts and Jillian Love.