Dr. Peter Paul Fuchs, a native of Vienna, Austria, and professor of conducting at Louisiana State University, was engaged to conduct the opening concert on October 19, 1960, to fill in for the ailing Maestro Cooper. Cooper informed the Association that he was too ill to return for the second concert on November 16, which was then also conducted by Dr. Fuchs. On that very evening Maestro Cooper died in Roosevelt Hospital in New York. Fuchs was contracted to finish the season.