The life
Iām 77 years old, and I canāt believe that
Iām here thinking about what is past.
I like to think of whatās next.
Bill Cook, 2008
1
Playing in Peoria
Billy Cook spent first grade in nine schools, in nine towns. He averaged entering a new town and a new school every month in and around his familyās uprootings and moves.
That explains it all, of course. No wonder the William Alfred Cook who survived that year is so ā¦
Unbridled?
Self-reliant?
Eternally curious?
Stubborn? Temperamental, even?
Adaptable?
Is there room in there for ā¦
Successful?
If that sputtering scholastic start really was what made Indiana businessman Bill Cook a billionaire, and the word got around, thereād be peripatetic parents botching up school enrollment patterns all over the country.
A Widow at Twenty-three
The Great Depression was tightening its chokehold on America when Cook was born in Mattoon, Illinois, on Tuesday, January 27, 1931, the first and only child of George and Cleo Cook. He arrived on what his mother remembered as an unusually warm day for January. She also remembered the sound of an Illinois Central Railroad train whistle blowing somewhere close at the very moment of her sonās birth, 6:10 PM. His dad couldnāt be there; he was in Wisconsin making rural sales calls on his $10-a-day Depression job.
In not just Mattoon but all across the globe, January 27 was a newsy day involving historic figures. The front page of the New York Herald-Tribune that morning had items on FDR (not yet a president), Winston Churchill (a supplanted national leader at his political nadir, booed in the House of Commons that very day), Mahatma Gandhi (after a victory by hunger strike), Pierre Laval (on the day he went into office as premier of France, which fourteen years later hanged him as a Nazi collaborator), Haile Selassie, Calvin Coolidge, and even a Hoosierāauthor Booth Tarkington (he had cataract surgery that day). It was an impressive alignment of historic figures involved in newsworthy things on that one January day, and Cleo Cook kept that paper around as a treasure, the kind of things mothers have tended to do since at least as far back as Luke 2:19 (āMary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heartā).
On that day in 1931, there surely was no happier new mother anywhere on the globe than baby Billās. Cleophus Javay DeLong Orndorff Cook was 38, a strikingly attractive woman for whom life had taken a devastating turn almost two decades earlier. She was born to Charles and Ada South DeLong on August 9, 1892, at Neoga, Illinois. At 21, she married a young man from a prosperous Mattoon family who was already on the rise in his own career as an employee in the thriving railroad business. āI understand he was a very nice guy,ā Bill Cook says. Just two years after the marriage, Harry Orndorff collapsed at work and died of what today probably would be called a congenital heart condition. At 23 Cleo Orndorff was a widow, her apparently settled world and promisingly comfortable financial future abruptly altered.
āShe was very young, and he was from a family with more money than hersāthey owned properties and businesses,ā Gayle Cook says. āBut he died, and there she was. She had a lot of gumption.ā
Her decision: āShe went to secretarial school to acquire a skill so she could work,ā Bill said. āThen she went to Chicago by herself to find a job, and she lived in an Eleanor Club. They were residential clubs, founded in 1898, to provide safe residence for genteel young working women. They were protected at night, and there was camaraderieāshe had friends there she kept in touch with all her life. Those clubs existed until 2001. One that she lived in was next-door to what now is the Playboy Mansion.ā
She did well as a secretary, working her way to a job in the brand-new, glistening white Wrigley Building downtown, where she worked directly for chewing gum magnate William Wrigley (not yet involved with the Cubs, hence his name not yet on the landmark ballpark that still bears it).
Cleo DeLong Orndorff didnāt rush into a second marriage. āIt took me a long time to get over Harry,ā she told Gayle Cook.
āShe often said to me she was glad she hadnāt had a child,ā Bill Cook said. āIt would have been difficult for her to earn a living in Mattoon. She said it was far better that she went to Chicago and made a life for herself.ā
George CookāGeorge Alfred Cook, son of Alfred Cook, the one who brought the family name to the United States from England (his own first name perpetuated as middle names of not just son George but also grandson William and great-grandson Carl)āwas born March 13, 1894, in New York State, but he grew up in Peoria.
One day, young George was clinging to a wire on the back of a trolley when he fell off and broke both wrists. āFrom then on, his wrists were locked,ā Bill said. It didnāt cost him any strength. āIt was unreal how hard he could throw a bowling ball. And it never really bothered him in doing his job. My dad was strong-willed, a very good-looking guy.ā
George Cook served in the army for two and a half years during World War I. One letter he sent home to his mother was published in the Peoria Star because of his candid humor. He was Corporal George Cook then, of Company D, Second Balloon Squadron, and he wrote of his sports experiences in the army:
The village we are billeted in is full of French soldiers and we have great times together. One night we played duck on a rock and we were all right except for a few broken fingers. We have to play their games as they are positively no good at our game, baseball. They just canāt seem to learn.
āDad played baseball in the good Peoria leagues when he was growing up,ā Bill said. āIn those years, before World War I, Peoria had terrific baseball.ā
George Cook was a sergeant when he was in an artillery battalion commanded by First Lieutenant Everett Dirksen. It was a relationship George cherished through the years as Dirksen ascended in national government and Republican politicsāan eight-term Illinois congressman, then four-term senator and ten-year Senate minority leader, renowned for balance, leadership, good humor, and one undying quip about governmental life: āA billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.ā
āI never met Dirksen, but they were friends,ā Bill said. āHe was born and raised in Pekin (just south of Peoria), and that group of men he commanded was out of Peoria.
George Cook and Cleo DeLong Orndorff were married June 29, 1923, at Warren Avenue Congregational Church in Chicago.
āOne of the last things Dad did in his life was go to Akron, Ohio, for a reunion of his battalion. When he came back, he said he had met with Dirksen. Iāll never forget that. Dad was so content that he got to see him and all the buddies he had been in the war with. It was the first time I ever saw my Dad really proud of doing something that very few people did.
āDad got hurt very badly in the war. He was gassed, and he also had a head wound. There was some question in his mind whether they ever put a plate in his head. He said, āSometimes I can feel something up there, but I donāt know if they put a plate in or not.āā
After the war, he became a buyer of menās apparel at Marshall Fieldās in Chicago. He was working for Western Electric when he met Cleo, and on June 29, 1923, in the Warren Avenue Congregational Church in Chicago, the chaplain of the Eleanor Club where Cleo was living officiated at their wedding.
Baby Makes Three
Almost eight years after the marriage, son Bill was born.
āHe was their only child, born when his mother was pretty close to 39,ā Gayle Cook said. āShe was wrapped up in that child. That figures.ā
āI was a motherās boy,ā Bill said. āMy father was a disciplinarianāhe was very proud of me as I grew up, being an athlete, my grades, just in general how I behaved.ā
His mother was the bigger influence on what the son became. āMy mother taught me religion and to try to be a good person. My dad was a very good person as well, hard to get to know, in some respects. He was somewhat reserved, had a temper. He was a big man, very strong. I was afraid of him, because of his size. He could take a 100-pound bag of seed and throw it twenty feetāit was just incredible what his bulk could do.
āHe weighed about 265 pounds, and it was good weight. He could hit golf balls farther than you could believe. He was an excellent bowler. In golf he would shill people now and then. Heād hit a few duffer shots and then say to a person, āWould you like to play for ten bucks?ā Dad had a good sense of humor, but he really hated phony people. If guys just struck him the wrong way, he took āem. I saw him do it.ā
Young Billās first years were in the Great Depression. George paid the family bills with the job that forced all those first-grade moves. He went farm to farm, knocking on doors, meeting farmers and convincing them the product he had was worth the hard-earned dollars they had to pay him.
Radio station WLSā50,000 watts, clear channelāboomed out of Chicago as the hub to a wide area of farmers in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. That was the place most of them got their vital farm information, on grain prices and other rural economic necessitiesāincluding weather. When tornadoes or storms approached, during emergencies and catastrophic events, WLS was the place farmers went. Thatās why it was governmentally designated as a clear-channel station, no one else allowed to operate on its dial number.
The station also published a magazine for farmers, Prairie Farmer. Dozens of times a day its announcers used the on-air identification: āThis is WLS, the Prairie Farmer station.ā A subscription to the magazine, its information as vital for farmers as the radio stationās, was what George Cook soldāthat, and a related insurance policy against a rampant threat of the day, rural theft, covering homes, crops, and outbuildings. Coverage came with membership in the Prairie Farmers Protective Association.
Bill Cook keeps in his office one of the associationās membership placards that his father gave to his customers. āYou put it on your barn door, or you put it on your car, and for $10 a year, if somebody stole somethingāup to $1,000āyou were covered by insurance. Plus, the āprotectiveā part was they would send somebody out to see if they could track down the bad guys.ā
Even in the Depression, George Cook found a market for what he was selling. But what he was selling covered a full year, and it didnāt take him long to go through a new area. Heād work a territory, then move on, taking his wife and son with him. āHeād set up in a community, go out and sell the community, and have to move on,ā Bill Cook remembers. Thatās why, in the academic year of 1937ā38, son Bill was a first-grader in
Plymouth, Indiana
Logansport, Indiana
LaSalle, Illinois
Peru, Illinois
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
Cassville, Wisconsin
Hazel Green, Wisconsin
Princeton, Illinois, and
Metamora, Illinois
Hazel Greenāso green, so small, so prettyālives on in Billās memory as his favorite, a town with a population barely over 1,000 just north of the Wisconsin-Illinois border and within ten miles of Iowa. āThat was such a nice place. I loved it. Leaving there was kind of traumatic because I really enjoyed the town and the kids there.ā
They lived mostly in the cheapest hotels they could find, in one room. There was not a lot to pack up when moving time came, no lease to break.
āThose were tough times. My dad and mother were big people, and it was hot. I donāt know why they didnāt get a cot or put me on the floor. We slept three in a bed.ā
A twinkle, a start of a smile:
āThatās probably why I donāt have any brothers or sisters.ā
In each of those nine towns, he entered a new teaching system and made new acquaintances. āIād meet these friends, and they wouldnāt be friends very long. Pretty soon weād be taking off.ā
One more move with Prairie Farmer took the Cooks to Peoria, Illinois, where the vagabonding ended. Peoria, Bill remembers, is where āMom finally said, āGeorge, thatās enough! We canāt do this anymore.āā
The family of three moved back into the Peoria home of George Cookās parents, who several years earlier had taken George and Cleo in for a while when Chicago proved too expensive for them during the worst days of the Great Depression.
No Bullying Problem
George Cook remained with Prairie Farmer for two more years. āI went to second and third grade in Peoria,ā Bill remembers.
Somehow all those moves didnāt take an expectable educational toll. Cleo Cook was meticulous in preserving pictures, clippings, and other memorabilia from Billās childhood. Included is a note she got early in their first school year in Peoria, from his second-grade teacher:
Mrs. Cook,
Iāve been thinking about placing Billy in ending-second. He seems more advanced than his class and I believe he would get along in the work very well. In a reading test that I gave him today, he showed 3rd grade reading ability. He seems so eager to work and finished everything so quickly that perhaps he would be more satisfied in the ending-second class. You can let me know what you think about doing this. I havenāt said anything about it t...