After 75 years, Barbara Lee remains a Coppell mainstay
By Greg Tepper
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It’s not entirely accurate to say that Barbara Lee has lived her entire life in Coppell. She left after she married her husband, Richard, in 1956.

“We couldn’t wait to get out of Coppell,” Lee, now 75, said. “We rented this big nice apartment [in Oak Cliff] and we lived there one month. It’s just like God had His hand on us. He didn’t intend for us to leave Coppell.”

Lee never did leave Coppell again, a place she’s called home since birth and her family’s called home since generations prior.

From the couch in her home on Graham Drive, Lee methodically rattles off her family’s history in Coppell, a town that was far different than it is today.

“When I was born, my mother and daddy lived in a house that is now covered up by water on North Lake,” Lee said. “It was at Moore Road and Hackberry, and you understand that back then, that was all Coppell.”

Lee reminisced about the quiet farming community – peanut and sweet potato farms, a cotton gin in Old Town Coppell – and having to take a bus to high school in Carrollton, as Coppell didn’t have a high school.

But one of her most vivid memories was Grapevine Springs Park.

“When we were little and in school, it was such a beautiful place,” Lee said. “Our end of school field trip was to the park. People spent all Sunday afternoon at the park. The women would bring fried chicken and their freezers of homemade ice cream. That creek, the water was just crystal clear and so clean.”

Lee’s husband moved to Coppell in 1947, and the pair was married in 1956 – at First Baptist Church of Coppell, of course. The couple had three children, and felt that Coppell provided access to all styles of life.

“We felt like we had a good country life, yet at any time, if there was anything cultural or some big event, we could go to Fort Worth or we could go to Dallas,” Lee said. “So we felt like we had the best of both worlds.”

Lee’s extensive knowledge of Coppell’s history has turned into a hobby, as she serves as president of the Coppell Historical Society.

“I want us to get all of this documented, what all of us remember,” Lee said. “Things change, and they can change in such a hurry. It’s hard to remember exactly where things were.”

In many ways, Barbara Lee is Coppell. She’s seen it grow and change, in war and peace, for all of her 75 years. And, she said, she’ll never leave again.

“I figure that I hope I’m going to die here,” Lee said. “I can’t imagine being any other place.”