Michael Cooper, Wake County
How has North Carolina shaped your own story?
"In North Carolina we don't boast or brag like they do in other states because we don't need to - we have so much to be proud and those memories belong to us.
My story began in the foothills of North Carolina, a region where my family has been since the mid-1700s. From up north, Scots-Irish and English settlers - my ancestors - came in search of a better way of life. And they found that here.
My parents were the first to go to college: to Wingate, Lenoir-Ryhne, and North Carolina State. Mom became a school teacher. My father worked for Lowe's (a North Carolina company that began as L.S. Lowe's North Wilkesboro Hardware).
As a child I enjoyed trips to Old Salem, Grandfather Mountain, USS Wilmington, and the North Carolina State Capitol. And I was mesmerized by the sights, the sounds, the atmosphere, of my very first college basketball game at historic Reynolds Coliseum.
In North Carolina we're proud of our hoops and our barbecue. We're proud of being First in Freedom and First in Flight. We're proud of our achievements.
As I got older I came to appreciate our state not just for those examples but also for the moments when we were good. The students on the campus of Shaw University who founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The Greensboro Four a Woolworth's lunch-counter in February of 1960.
North Carolina had the first public university in the country. We invested in roads and schools during the Great Depression and then higher education. Those opportunities opened doors for me as a kid from Appalachia. And I have learned from North Carolina's example the importance of giving back.
Here in North Carolina we are proud but not boastful, innovative but not carefree, rich in tradition but not trapped in the past, a state where the weak grow strong, and the strong grow great. I love that story, the Wright Brothers, the Halifax Resolves, Tobacco Road, Junior Johnson, Billy Graham, Bill Friday, the barbecue wars (Lexington style is the best), and when the teacher rolled in the TV cart so we could watch the ACC Tournament. Those memories have stayed with me. And I want to help make more of them."