Eulogy for Marjorie Virginia Cook

Eulogy for Marjorie Virginia Cook

by Richard C. Cook

An abridged version of this eulogy was delivered at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Williamsburg, VA, March 17, 2012

On behalf of the family, and especially my sisters Sandy and Christine, we want to offer our heartfelt thanks to all of you for coming today to celebrate the life of our mother, Marjorie Virginia Cook, who passed away peacefully on February 18 just before 7 p.m. at the home she shared with Christine and her family in Vienna, Virginia.

Our thanks also to Rev. Shirley Smith Graham and the staff and congregation of St. Martin’s for providing a home for Mom (literally at one point) and giving Mom and us so much love and support. The same for Rev. Sven vanBaars, rector of Abingdon Episcopal Church, formerly assistant rector of St. Martin’s.

“What a Life!”

This is the title of Mom’s memoirs, spoken on tape during the last year of her life.

“What a life,” indeed! Mom was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 30, 1922, at a time when Brooklyn was still one of the major melting pots of American society. Her mother was Ethel Gertrude Brown, from a Brooklyn family in the Bayside neighborhood. Her father was Carlton William Peilow, who sailed with the U.S. Navy on the troop transports out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War I.

Bill Peilow was from French Canadian lineage, while Ethel’s side had Irish and English. Her grandfather, William Forster, had immigrated through Ellis Island during the Irish potato famine and served as a gunnery sergeant in the Union Army (That’s right, the Union Army.). His unit was with General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox.

In 1927 at the age of four, Mom waved her little flag at Floyd Bennett field when Charles Lindbergh returned to the U.S. from his famous transatlantic flight. Soon afterwards her parents placed all they could carry in a Model A Ford and drove cross-country on dirt roads to Montana where our Grandpa had relatives.

But when the Depression struck, there were no jobs back East to which to return. So Grandpa found work in the lumber camps and later with the Forest Service. Mom grew up at a place called Seeley Lake in the Rocky Mountains. Yes, she actually lived in a log cabin. Yes, a box in a stream was the family’s refrigerator. And yes, she did walk two miles each way to the one-room schoolhouse in the snow.

Seeley Lake did not have a high school, so Mom left home for good, attending high school in Missoula while boarding with relatives, then went to a year of college before her money ran out. She then attended nursing school on the government’s wartime ticket, then married our father, Richard Edward Cook, when he was on leave from duty with the Seabees during the last year of World War II.

Yours truly was born in 1946. A daughter was conceived, but tragedy struck. Our sister Barbara was a “blue baby.” Severely handicapped physically and mentally, she spent the rest of her life institutionalized in state facilities with our parents contributing to her support, until her death on October 14, 2004, which weighed heavily on Mom.

Our father had gotten his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Montana, and the family moved first to Oklahoma, where he was from, and then to Michigan, where he worked for Dow Chemical. When my sister Sandy was born in 1952 and my sister Christine in 1956, our parents struggled to save them from the same fate as our sister Barbara. Though medical technology was still relatively undeveloped in this area, they succeeded, and Sandy and Christine were able to lead normal lives.

In 1960 we moved to Williamsburg, with our grandparents joining us from Montana, after Dow opened a textile processing plant on the road to Newport News. We attended Bruton Parish Church, then joined St. Martin’s when it started up as a tiny mission church in 1963. Before long came Mom’s biggest break. Having to work full-time and then some after she and our dad were divorced, she became a tour escort with Colonial Williamsburg, where she excelled and loved every minute of it.

It was a time when a tour escort was both a researcher and scholar. It’s been called the Golden Age of the Williamsburg Restoration, and Mom was in the middle of it, teaching both school groups and celebrities, developing new programs, and using her job as a springboard to travel, both in the U.S. and abroad to places like Europe, Egypt, and other exotic destinations.

At one point CW even made her a supervisor. Mom hated it because supervisors are expected to criticize their underlings and even reprimand or fire them if they failed to measure up. Why was this so hard? Because Mom was so accustomed to seeing only the good in everyone, as she did throughout her life.

Mom was able to hold onto her house only by renting rooms to college students, friends of friends, and total strangers. And she became a mentor and friend to many in the Williamsburg community, many of whom we know are here today. And she became a grandmother to a group eventually numbering thirteen, now with nine great-grandchildren and counting.

Mom retired from Colonial Williamsburg in 1991. Over time she had some health issues and hospitalizations, but the worst was when she suddenly developed macular degeneration in 1997, which left her legally blind. She had been working part-time for some private tour companies but had to give that up. She no longer could drive. She could read with difficulty and only then with magnification or special equipment. Nevertheless, she was a beacon of light to all who knew her, especially during the annual Christmas celebrations at her house when the always-growing extended family gathered.

Let me just mention one personal anecdote which shows Mom’s spirit. In 2007, I retired from the government, having written a book on the space shuttle Challenger disaster based on my experiences while working for NASA at the time. To my knowledge, Mom was the first person to read the book. It was over 500 pages long and was packed with complex technical analysis. She read it cover to cover on her magnifying viewer. She was then 84 years old.

In 2009, Mom decided to sell her house and move into assisted living, which she did at Spring Arbor on Capitol Landing Road. This worked well for a while, but two hospitalizations followed by periods at a rehab facility caused her to decide to move in with Christine and her family three hours north in Vienna, VA, just outside Washington, D.C.

Leaving Williamsburg was one of the hardest things she had ever done. Her roots ran so deep, her friendships were so many, the memories so powerful. But people stayed in touch with her, and her spirit remained strong as her body continued to act up.

After a couple of months, her health was much better and she was able to go out and became more active. On her 89^th birthday, my wife Karen and I drove to Vienna to go out to lunch with her and Christine at Amphora restaurant, a local landmark. She had the seafood platter and some chocolate birthday cake. Not long before, she had gone with Christine and her husband Bob to a casino in West Virginia where she won $300 in a slot machine. She was thrilled and wanted to share her winnings. That was Mom.

But a month later she was taken to Fairfax Hospital by ambulance. Her breathing was giving out. She began to struggle and decided, with Christine and her doctors, to go back to the house under hospice care. I called Shirley to tell her. Shirley asked if hospice care was Mom’s own decision. I said, “We always do what our mother tells us.”

Until her final week, Mom was still giving me business advice. We had another family gathering, like so many before, with grandchildren and great-grandchildren attending.

Before the end of the week she received from the rector of Holy Cross Episcopal Church, Joy Weibefr, the last rites of the Episcopal Church and communion. On her last day Christine once again ministered to her physical needs, and Sandy sang to her one of her favorite songs: “Amazing Grace.” Mom was in peace that day. She was leaving for the light, and did so with her usual independence at a moment when Christine and Bob had stepped into the hallway with the hospice nurse.

So to what then do I liken our mother?

I call her a songbird.

In the springtime of her life she sang her song as a young girl scampering with her pet dog Teddy through the mountain landscape of Montana.

In the summer of her life she sang as a devoted mother, as a teacher of thousands about the history she loved, and as a mentor and devoted friend to many others.

In the autumn of her life her song was as a stalwart of strength, goodwill, and stability both to her friends, many also now aging, and to a large extended family who relied on her in turbulent times to always be there and be of good cheer.

In the winter of her life her song exhibited a backbone of steel as she looked calmly into the light of the great unknown. Into this light she departed. Someday we all hope to follow.

This songbird was our mom and our kids’ grandma. She is still singing.