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Carter Vanderbilt Cooper

Carter Vanderbilt Cooper (January 27, 1965 - July 22, 1988) was the first born son of writer Wyatt Cooper and his wife, designer and artist Gloria Vanderbilt, and the elder brother of CNN journalist Anderson Cooper.

While there are few sources available about the life of Carter Cooper, he is mentioned frequently in his father's book, Families: a Memoir and a Celebration (Harper and Row, 1975). Early in the book Wyatt describes his son, saying "Carter is intellectual, thoughtful, sensitive, gentle, fastidious, subtle and very aware of everything around him. He likes reading, talking, and time to think his thoughts". Wyatt goes on to say that as a child Carter was interested in history, particularly military history, and architecture. He took an interest in the Vanderbilt houses. Biltmore, with its own railway and grounds designed by Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted, was a childhood favorite.

Carter Cooper attended The Dalton School in New York City and graduated in 1987 from Princeton University, where he had spoken to friends of becoming a writer and of emulating his late father in doing so. (Wyatt Cooper died in 1978, three weeks before Carter's 13th birthday.) In an article written for the September 2003 issue of Details, Anderson Cooper wrote of his brother that, "fter graduation, he wrote book reviews and started editing a history magazine; he talked about writing a novel. Politics was a passion, but he wasn't suited for the rough-and-tumble of the game. He felt things too deeply. 'There's no wall between Carter's head and his heart,' a friend of his once said. That was true. He was gentle."

On July 22, 1988, as his mother watched, Carter jumped from the 14th-floor terrace of her apartment, an apparent suicide. His last words reportedly were, "Will I ever feel again?" An article that appeared in the New York Times the following day noted that "Mr. Cooper, who had been undergoing treatment for depression, left no note". Gloria Vanderbilt wrote in her book, A Mother's Story, that she believed that Carter's actions were caused by a psychotic episode induced by an allergy to the anti-asthma medical prescription drug Proventil. The funeral was held July 26, 1988, at St. James Episcopal Church in New York. Carter Vanderbilt Cooper was buried beside his father.

In an interview on Larry King Live, his brother Anderson told of Carter's depression, a recently failed relationship, and fear of the future, suggesting that his brother had not dealt well with the stress, but repeated their mother's story that Carter awoke in a confused stupor before jumping to his death.