Bev O'Neal Cochran, Jr.

Beverly O'Neal Cochran, Jr, 82, died peacefully in his sleep July 22, 2016, at his home in Avondale Estates, GA. He was former administrator and CEO of The United Methodist Children's Home, Decatur.

Born to Neal and Ruby Cochran in Tennille, GA, Bev grew up rough and angry in Augusta, Ga, playing hooky his entire third grade year, brawling in the streets with bike chains, and throwing firecrackers at police cars. He avoided getting picked up by the police by virtue of being an unusually fast runner. Many of his friends were not so fortunate.

At Richmond Academy, Football Coach Milligan helped Bev start to turn around. On a football scholarship at Georgia Tech, he finally started applying himself academically. Then the U.S. Army disciplined his character and dispossessed him of racial prejudices he had absorbed in his youth. His experience on an army track team was particularly helpful in that regard.

After the army, he was on his way to a college in South Carolina where he had another football scholarship, but saw the exit for Wofford College, which he knew also had a team, decided he was tired of driving, and pulled off. He drove to the football field, introduced himself to the coach, had an impromptu try-out for the team, and then enrolled. A professor helped him see that he had a lot to offer to hurting, angry children, like the child he had been, and with that man's assistance he got a job as a juvenile probation officer and counselor. After that he worked at a series of children's homes as a social-worker psychologist, then a social services director, and finally the administrator. He chose this trajectory deliberately, having decided he could help more children if he had authority to change institutions and policies.

While in the army he had met Jane Strauss and began a 47-year romance. They married while he was at Wofford, and they worked in partnership in social services, at home, and in the Church, moving frequently until 1969, when he accepted the administrator position at UMCH in Decatur, GA.

He immediately started working to get the youngest children out of group care and into families; finding a visiting family for each remaining child; adding programs and staff to work with the children, their birth families, and foster families with the goal of reuniting families where possible; reducing the average length of stay at the home from six years to eighteen months; pushing for racial integration before society and law had gotten there yet; and creating an emergency housing program, transitional housing for homeless families, and an independent living program for older teens. Over the course of his career, he changed the UMCH model to get children out of institutionalized care. In short, at UMCH Bev had found a place where he could create one opportunity after another to help people.

Bev lost his beloved wife, Jane, in 2004, and is survived by daughter. Pam Kirkwood of Bristol, TN; son and daughter-in-law, Barney and Mary Cochran of Mount Vernon, OH; grandchildren, Elizabeth Hamilton and her husband, Patrick, of Chattanooga, TN, Dave Kirkwood and his wife, Liz, of McNeal, AZ, Joseph Cochran of Mount Vernon, OH, Johnson Cochran of Grand Rapids, MI, and Benjamin Cochran of Mount Vernon, OH; 4 great-grandchildren; and many, many children and families from UMCH.

Visitation will be where his heart was, at the United Methodist Children's Home in Decatur, Tuesday, July 26, 2016, from 2pm-4pm and 6pm-8pm. Funeral service will be Wednesday, July 27, 2016, 10am, Decatur First United Methodist Church. Interment will be at 3pm Wednesday, July 27, at Magnolia Cemetery, 702 3rd Street Augusta, GA 30901.

Memorials may be sent to UMCH, 500 Columbia Dr., Decatur, GA 30030.

Feel free to leave the family your condolences via the guestbook provided.

Funeral Home:
A. S. Turner & Sons
2773 North Decatur Road
Decatur, GA
30033