DALLAS -- The shoes say it all. Buster Cooper has danced for so long in the same leathery footwear that the stitches have come undone between the toe and the sole. He wears them as a badge of honor, tapping like an elderly Savion Glover while leading 11 women in a morning class.

Cooper's prowess is all the more remarkable considering his age -- 84. He began dancing as a 3-year-old growing up in Magnolia, Ark. His first teacher, and the best by far, he says, was the family's maid.

"Delma Spears taught me the Charleston and the Black Bottom," he says. "She would take me downtown, to the grocery store and the barbershop, and make me dance. She would rap -- in those days, rap was clapping and then, of course, we passed the hat."

He lets out a laugh that causes his whole body to shake. He smiles even wider remembering his mother's reaction to a growing bounty of candy and cookies, knowing she hadn't paid for it.

"Well," he says in his Southern drawl, "you can bet that was the end for me and Delma, when it came to passin' the hat."

Broad inspiration

But in every other way, it launched a remarkable career. Generations of Dallas dancers have reaped the benefits of taking classes from Cooper, who opened a studio here in 1951 and who founded the dance program at the Hockaday School.

Even more impressive, scores of Cooper alumni have gone on to the Dallas Summer Musicals and the Broadway stage, dancing in The Music Man, The Pajama Game, West Side Story, A Chorus Line, Cats and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

More than contributing to a single milestone, however, his students sing his praises for giving them the finest gift of all -- a calling.

"Buster has so inspired me," says Caron Gitelman Grant, 51, who took dance from Cooper at Hockaday, majored in it at Southern Methodist University and began doing it professionally with the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. For the past 10 years, she has been an Equity stage manager.

Grant trained in ballet from 3 to 14 and then took jazz and tap from Cooper, "which opened up a whole new world," she says. "Buster gave me my professional life."

Dazzling performer

He began his own dance lessons at 10, when a family friend marveled at his unusual gift and offered to pay for them. By 12, he was studying dance on Canal Street in New Orleans. At 17, he attended a workshop in Chicago and had the good fortune of being asked to stand in for Gene Kelly's brother, Fred. It proved to be a pivotal moment, with members of the National Association of Dance Teachers applauding his energy and enthusiasm but most of all, his rare skill.

"That was my beginning," he says. "I didn't have enough sense to be scared, so I got up and did my number."

The year was 1942, and it launched his career as a dancer and teacher. In 1944, with the U.S. still immersed in World War II, he was drafted. His commanding officers in the Army "found out I could dance," he says. "So, I performed at service clubs and in every town we went to."

Cooper dazzled as a performer with Patsy Swayze, mother of Dirty Dancing actor Patrick. After the war, he spent summers dancing in Chicago and New York. And then in 1951 came the offer in Dallas, where Fred Astaire chose to put one of his franchise dance locations. He stayed with the Astaire company for a year, then opened his own studio. In 1953, he got a call from Tom Merriman, head of the fine arts department at Hockaday. Cooper remained a fixture at the private girls' academy until 1988.

He supervised legions of girls through dance numbers in operettas and musicals. (In 1955, he actually introduced musicals to Hockaday, which had previously considered them, in his words, "too racy.") He married in 1959, and he and wife, Marianne, raised two daughters.

Complete turnaround

Life took a terrible turn in July 1987, when Kathy Leverton, his oldest daughter, was abducted and murdered. To this day, it remains an unsolved homicide. A divorcee with three children, Leverton had been working as a manager trainee at a Texaco station, says her sister, Leslie Cooper, who lives in Dallas.

Cooper and his wife began raising Kathy's three children, one of whom, Keira Leverton, 29, is now a professional dancer. Keira is a member of Sesame Street Live.

"It changed their lives completely," Leslie Cooper says of her sister's murder. "Parents are not supposed to see their children die. They're supposed to go before their kids go, so it cast a lingering sadness over all of us."

Her father, she says, began to seek out dance "as a kind of refuge. It's all he's done, all he knows. It's his comfort and his sanctuary."

Cooper and his wife gained custody of all three children. "And we raised them. Raising three grandchildren does change your life. As far as career, after Kathy was killed, I retired from Hockaday. I thought the load was a bit too much to carry. It was too much responsibility, but I did keep my studio. I felt I could no longer do an adequate job at Hockaday."

So many years later, his daughter marvels at his ability to tap out "really complicated patterns and combinations that challenge everyone to this day" and to do so at 84.

"He's a genius," she says.

Worth remembering

Sally Soldo, 61, whose professional career was spent with the Dallas Summer Musicals, met Cooper when she was 13. He changed her life, she says.

Penny Wilson, 61, met him as a 14-year-old, taking classes at an Oak Cliff studio near Sunset High, where she and Soldo would later graduate. He helped her advance, says Wilson, all the way to Broadway. She later took a job as choreographer with the Barney television series and says she owes it all to her mentor.

So, what does he love about dance?

Without hesitating, he says, "Being able to express a feeling within me."

And if you think he's good at 84, you should have seen him as a teenage whippersnapper. "I could do back flips," he says with a belly laugh. "I taught myself how to do them in an Arkansas cornfield when I was 13."

Growing up in Magnolia, he had an older sister, who now lives in a nursing home, and a younger brother, who died several years ago. Dance has kept Cooper active and maybe alive. "I so wish my little brother had had something like I had," he says.

Their father was an electrician who ran the ice plant in Magnolia. Their mother, who was quite the seamstress, sewed dozens of his costumes. And while his father never approved of what he deemed a feminine pursuit, his mom was unfailingly supportive.

She was right. In 1996, Cooper received the lifetime achievement award given by Dance Masters of America. Tommy Tune, George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille and Robert Joffrey are among its other recipients. He later received lifetime achievement awards from Dance Educators of America and the Dallas Dance Council.

But it's all those students, he says, who make it a life and career worth remembering.

"So many have gone on and done such wonderful things," he says. "To see them on Broadway ... it's indescribable."

He turns to Wilson and says, "Why, I remember seeing that production you directed and choreographed at Radio City Music Hall. I couldn't believe the crowds they pulled in! You had to do an extra show!"

Moments later, he's back on the floor, writhing and tapping, leaving marks on the vinyl surface. As the hole in his shoe grows wider and deeper, he's leading a new generation of dancers to a fresh set of dreams.

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