Witness to History – My Forrest Gump Career
Friday, March 15th, 2013By Richard C. Cook Like Forrest Gump, I’ve been a first-hand witness to some of the major historical events of our time. While the fictional Gump was named for Confederate Civil War General Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, my Irish-born great-great-grandfather William Forster was a gunnery sergeant for the Union army whose unit was with General Grant [...]


In January 1986 Cook became the first NASA official to testify publicly on the space agency's prior knowledge of flaws in the solid rocket booster O-ring joints that destroyed Challenger and took the lives of its seven astronauts. He told his story in the book Challenger Revealed, published in 2007. Publisher's Weekly wrote of the book: "Easily the most informative and important book on the disaster."
