When the combine breaks down and Doug Coop and his dad are out in the heat trying to fix it, Doug has a line he likes to pull out.
"A bad day on the farm is better than a good day in the Army."
He would know. The Jacksonville farmer and
IL Corn Growers Association member served 20 years in the U.S. Army and the
Illinois National Guard. He deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, worked alongside soldiers in Poland and met two U.S. presidents before he retired in 2019 to farm full time with his family.
A cold call that turned into a career
In 1997, Doug was 19 and, in his words, "a little bit adrift." He came home one morning after working the night shift and picked up a call at his parents' house. It was an Army recruiter.
"He's like, have you given any thought to your future? And I'm like, no, I haven't. Come on over," Doug said. "I was probably the easiest recruit this guy ever had."
He enlisted in the Army Reserve as a mechanic. In college he joined
ROTC, and in December 2001, just weeks after 9/11, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He had planned to be a maintenance officer.
"After 9/11, the Army said, congratulations, you're now in the infantry," he said.
Iraq, Afghanistan and the moments that stay with you
Doug spent three years on active duty as an infantry officer with the 101st Airborne Division and deployed to Iraq in 2003. Along with combat missions, his unit helped get infrastructure running again and provided security and logistics for some of Iraq's first free elections.
"Even as a 25-year-old young man, I really appreciated the significance of being at a polling place in a part of a country where it's the first time they ever had the right to vote," he said.
When his active duty commitment ended, Doug figured he'd done his part. He landed a job at Caterpillar in Montgomery, Illinois. About two years later, the Army involuntarily recalled him. This time he went to Afghanistan as a military advisor attached to the 3rd Special Forces Group, training and mentoring the Afghan National Army on combat patrols and missions.
That deployment was almost entirely combat operations, and his team suffered losses.
"Anytime a soldier goes through something like that, that stays with you forever," he said. "There's the good with the bad. The peaks and valleys of military service."
Dolly Parton in the back seat of a Buick
Some of those peaks came at
Fort Campbell, Kentucky. In his last active duty role, Doug served as a protocol officer for the 101st Airborne, handling distinguished visitors to the post, from President George W. Bush and the Secretary of Defense to celebrities who came to thank soldiers home from Iraq.
When Dolly Parton came for a book signing and her tour bus couldn't fit where it needed to go, Doug put her and her assistant in the back of his car and drove them around for the day.
"I tell people, I had Dolly Parton in the back seat of my Buick," he said. "She was just a wonderful person. The type of person you're around and instantly you're like, this is a great person." She also signed his guitar. Parton died Aug. 25, 2026, at age 80.
He also helped escort Oprah Winfrey, Cindy Crawford and Kenny Chesney when Oprah hosted what was billed as the world's largest baby shower at Fort Campbell, a surprise event for 640 expectant military moms about nine months after soldiers returned from deployment.
From Caterpillar to Poland
Back at Caterpillar after Afghanistan, the 2008 recession hit. A voluntary separation offer gave Doug the seed money to move to Jacksonville and farm with his dad. A coworker who served in the Illinois National Guard suggested he join the Guard, too, and in 2009 he did.
He became director of the
Illinois National Guard State Partnership Program, which pairs Illinois' Army and Air National Guard with the Republic of Poland. Doug coordinated training, exercises and cooperation between Illinois, Poland and other Eastern European countries, spending time in Poland about every other month, along with Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Germany. In his part-time Guard role, he commanded the Illinois National Guard Officer Candidate School.
The job brought him to dinners at the home of the President of Poland, alongside his commanding general.
"Just sitting there as a farm kid from West Central Illinois, with the president of Poland, being like, how in the world did I end up here?" he said.
During one exercise, President Barack Obama visited Poland and walked down the line of soldiers. When Doug introduced his unit, the president paused.
"He's like, wait a second, are you all from Illinois?" Doug said. "I'm like, yes, Mr. President, we're from the Illinois National Guard."
Then he added, "But I would trade all that in a heartbeat for a minute on the farm."
Eight generations of farming
Doug is an eighth-generation farmer. His family were sharecroppers in England and came to the U.S. in the mid-1800s for the chance to farm for themselves. The family farmed in Kendall and Grundy counties near Minooka, but in the early 2000s, as subdivisions spread toward one farm near Plainfield, they sold it and relocated to Jacksonville.
His dad has farmed his entire life while also teaching and selling real estate, and his mom worked off the farm as a nurse. They kept the farm going through the 1980s, and today the family owns and farms about 850 acres.
"I say I've taken over from my dad, but really, my dad and I work hand in hand still, and he's far from retired," Doug said. "It's a father-son operation."
This year's harvest was the earliest they've ever had. They started shelling corn Aug. 31, and yields held up well despite a wet June.
What the Army brought to the farm
Ask Doug which military skills carry over to farming and he'll tell you: all of them.
"The military instills an awful lot of discipline into you, and discipline is very important in farming," he said. "I think farmers are the most disciplined group of people out there, as far as getting the work done, the planning, the timeliness of it."
He also points to resiliency, physical, mental and emotional, and above all, leadership. Today he serves as president of the
Cass-Morgan Farm Bureau and on the Morgan County Farm Service Agency county committee.
"I don't know if I would be doing any of that if it wasn't for my experiences and some of the traits I built in the Army," he said.
A family affair
Doug's parents and three sisters are all part of the family partnership, and his mom is key to the operation.
"I hit the lottery with my family," he said. His sisters supported him through every deployment with letters, care packages and showing up for his events.
He also met his wife, Mindi, through the service. She is a fellow veteran, and the two met in the Illinois National Guard, where she also retired. Their son Tucker, 9, learned to drive the grain cart for the first time this fall, and daughter Audrey, 6, rides along.
"It's truly a family affair," he said.
What Veterans Day means to him
Veterans Day has changed for Doug over the years. These days it's less about celebrating with buddies and more about answering his kids' questions or sharing his story. He hopes people remember the day began as Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
He's also grateful for how much has changed in the way the country treats its veterans, especially compared with what those returning from Korea and Vietnam faced.
"We've really turned a corner on that, post-9/11 in particular," he said. "Veterans enjoy a lot of honor and respect in American society now, and that's very appreciated by all of us."
