Jack Cook, Catholic Worker, Author

Today we lost a treasure. Jack Cook, Catholic Worker, mentor to many, friend and colleague to others passed away at home in Endwell, NY on June 5, 2020. Jack was many things to many people. Father, husband, brother, teacher, writer, poet, author, laborer, soup maker, anarchist, story teller, troublemaker, personalist, hobbit, drinking buddy, felon and ex-con for resisting the draft, a hero. He could be one of the kindest persons in the world and a royal pain in the butt, sometimes at the exact same moment. That was Jack. Some called him a curmudgeon and he loved the role.

Jack and I met at the Catholic Worker, sometime in 1965. We argued about politics and strategies. We bemoaned the state of the movement and leaders who were more interested in promoting themselves rather than promoting the end of the war and some sort of lasting peace. Jack’s writing caught the eye of Dorothy Day and she loved his pieces and looked to him for advice on organizing and editing the Catholic Worker monthly paper. Jack was sent by Dorothy to Delano California where Cesar Chavez was organizing strikes by farmworkers along with a national grape boycott. Jack’s job was to document what was happening but he couldn’t resist getting actively involved in the strikes and demonstrations. This was just one stop along Jack’s roads less travelled.

I went off to prison while Jack stayed involved at the Worker, making soup and organizing the clothing room and writing, writing, writing. He had writing projects incubating in his head, seeds planted by experiences, feelings and beliefs that he would test on people in great flurries of speech and language, in pubs or on the street sitting on a park bench, curved pipe always full and hanging from his lips. I’ve watched that pipe fall, be caught or burn a hole in his pocket more than a few times. 

One day, I saw my old friend arrive in the federal lock up where I was hoping for, praying for my own release. We walked together, went to the little chapel together and kept up with the news together. The day came when I was released and left Jack. He continued to get into good trouble, advocating and looking out for other prisoners and always writing about it. He led a little uprising while in prison (no small thing really) and ended up doing time in isolation more than once. His time being incarcerated affected him as it does everyone who experiences it and he did what Jack always did. He wrote about it.

Jack eventually returned to the Catholic Worker. I had moved to upstate NY and was living in Spencer, NY, a small town south of Ithaca. One day I got a call from Jack, he had some family difficulties and was getting away from the city. We talked and talked and next thing you know Jack and I concluded he should come and spend some time living with me and my young family. From there Jack got one of the jobs he enjoyed the most in his life I think. He started working at a small sawmill turning logs into planks with a team of workers he befriended for life. Jack eventually ended up in Ithaca, teaching and writing and his life went on and included meeting his wife and partner Ellen. 

He and I have remained friends through these many years. We’ve supported each other, complained about ourselves and everyone else to each other and encouraged each other on various projects and detours that we’ve both taken.

I’ve taken to writing a few things here and there myself through a blog called The Gadfly. Jack would always encourage me. He’d teach me about the muse who comes and goes and sometimes teases and frustrates every writer, musician, poet. He was certainly a critic and sometimes a very harsh one. On the other hand a compliment from Jack about your writing was like getting a gold star in kindergarten and he gave me a few. I’ll always appreciate that. 

But now Jack is gone. His was a strong voice at the Catholic Worker that needed to be heard. Sometimes it was welcomed and other times it was rebuffed. His words and writings though will live on. His book on prison “Rags of Time” and his writings about times and people at the Worker, “Bowery Blues” are still out there waiting to be read and shared on bookshelves and in studies where leather chairs, fireplaces dwell and pipe smoke hangs in the air. 

Here, here Jack. Presente!