10 year Anniversary of JKC's passing

[TK]

The fact that the stadium no longer bears his name is still very much an issue with me. I still call it The Jack.

Yeah, it sucks, but when you have a deal with a company who helps out, I guess you really have no other choice.

ONLY mistake he made was NOT leaving the team to his son, NOW we're stuck wit Snyder, whos first thing he did was TAKE THE NAME OFF THE HOUSE THAT HE BUILT. THAT SON OF A BEACH

You guys know that since Cooke biuld FedEx with his money, he had already planned to sell the naming rights to help recoup part of the money he spent, right? But I guess it's just easier for some of you to blame Snyder for everything. Same as it ever was.

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/library/cooke/

Jack Kent Cooke's Will: Index Page

Jack Kent Cooke's will was filed May 7 in Fauquier County Circuit Court. The will's major legal feature is the creation of a foundation to award scholarships to promising young people and start a school for underprivileged children. The foundation will receive the majority of Cooke's money, estimated at several hundred million dollars.

In addition to the foundation bequest, the 1988 will and its eight amendments also reflect Cooke's turbulent personal life. About three months before he died, Cooke changed his will to disinherit his fourth wife, Marlene Ramallo Cooke, once designated to receive a $5 million gift and a $10 million trust. Cooke disinherited second wife Jeanne Maxwell Cooke and third wife Suzanne Elizabeth Martin but did provide for the 8-year-old daughter he had with Martin.

Following is the full text of Cooke's will and amendments, which washingtonpost.com has indexed to show bequests over the last 11 years to the foundation, relatives and friends. Clicking on a link will take you directly to the relevant part of the will. Use your browser's Back button to return to this index page. Credits:

Online Producers: Bill Frischling and Sascha Segan

Editor: Mary Lou Fulton

Marlena (also known as Marlene) Chalmers (fourth wife)

Designated to receive $500,000 outright (1993)

Her sons designated to receive $5,000 each (1993)

Disinherited, along with her sons (1993)

Her mother, Edna Neves, designated to receive $250,000 trust (1995)

Designated to receive $5 million over five years and a $10 million trust (1996)

Her son Alex designated to receive $1 million trust (1996)

Mother Edna Neves dies; gift revoked (1996)

Designated to receive access to Jack's library (1996)

All bequests, to her and her sons, revoked (1997)

Access to Jack's library revoked (1997)

Jacqueline Kent Cooke (daughter, now age 8)

Acknowledged as one of three legitimate children (1988)

Designated to receive $1 million trust (1988)

Jack Kent Cooke establishes bank account in Jacqueline's name (1991)

Assured of court-mandated support payments (1991)

$1 million trust increased to $5 million (1996)

Support payments eliminated in favor of trust (1996)

Suzanne Elizabeth Martin (third wife and mother of Jacqueline)

Disinherited (1988)

Stripped of control over daughter Jacqueline's money (1991)

Disinherited again (1993)

Jeanne Maxwell Cooke (second wife)

Designated to receive $300,000 trust and cars (1988)

Disinherited (1996)

John Kent Cooke (son)

Acknowledged as one of three legitimate children (1988)

Designated to receive clothing, watch, silver, car (1988)

Designated to receive $50 million trust (1988)

Designated to run Redskins (1988)

Made executor (1988)

Silver now to be split between John and brother Ralph (1989)

$50 million trust reduced to $10 million (1993)

Designated to receive $15 million outright (1993)

Previous cash bequests revoked; designated to receive $10 million over five years and $15 million trust (1996)

Designated to become President of the Redskins (1996)

Shares access to Jack's library with Marlena (1996)

Gets sole access to Jack's library (1997)

Ralph Kent Cooke (son)

One of three legitimate children (1988)

Designated to receive car and artwork (1988)

Designated to receive $50 million trust (1988)

Designated to run Elmendorf Farms (1988)

Made executor (1988)

$50 million trust reduced to $10 million (1993)

Ralph Kent Cooke dies (1996)

Anita Cooke (daughter-in-law; survived Ralph)

Designated to receive $2 million trust (1996)

Harold Cooke (brother)

Designated to receive $250,000 outright (1988)

Designated to receive $1 million trust (1997)

Donald Ralph Cooke (brother)

Designated to receive $100,000 outright (1988)

Designated to receive $1 million trust (1988)

Thelma Marion Franks (sister)

Designated to receive $100,000 outright (1988)

Designated to receive $1 million trust (1988)

Bequests to Miscellaneous Relatives

Brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews designated to receive varying funds (1988)

Grandchildren designated to receive $1 million trusts; nieces and nephews to receive $500,000 trusts (1996)

Bequests to Employees and Friends

Employees to receive between $5,000 and $25,000 (1988)

Executors of estate named (1988)

Executors of estate revised (1993)

Executors of estate revised (1996)

Jack Kent Cooke Foundation

Designated to receive remainder of estate (1988)

Scholarships designated for postgraduate students (1988)

Scholarships designated for high school and college students; orphanage to be created; sports facilities to be established for underprivileged children (1993)

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/redskins/longterm/cooke/articles/chron.htm

Jack Kent Cooke Life Chronology

Associated Press

Sunday, April 6, 1997; 6:08 p.m. EDT

Chronology of the life of Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, who died Sunday:

Oct. 25, 1912 — Cooke is born in Hamilton, Ontario.

1934 — Cooke starts selling encyclopedias across Canada to earn money during the Depression.

1937 — Cooke is hired by press giant Roy Thomson to manage CJCS, a radio station in Stratford, Ontario, for $25 a week, his first job in the communications television industry from which he would make his fortune.

1951 — In his first sports business venture, Cooke purchases baseball's Toronto Maple Leafs of the AAA International league.

1960 — Cooke moves to California.

1965 — Cooke buys the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers from trucking magnate Bob Short for $5.2 million, a big price tag in its day. Cooke would later sign such greats as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson.

1966 — Cooke acquires the NHL expansion franchise called the Kings.

1967 — Cooke builds the ultimate showplace for his Los Angeles teams, the "Fabulous'' Forum.

1971 — Cooke is promoter of the first fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, billed as the "Fight of the Century,'' at Madison Square Garden.

1974 — Cooke becomes majority owner of the Redskins.

1978 — Cooke moves to the Washington area.

1979 — Cooke sells the Lakers and the Kings to Dr. Jerry Buss for $67.5 million, then the largest business transaction in sports history.

1979 — Cooke divorces first wife, the former Jeannie Carnegie. The settlement made the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest at that time ($49 million). The presiding judge was Joseph Wapner of "People's Court" fame.

1980 — Cooke takes over day-to-day operation of the Redskins from Edward Bennett Williams.

Oct. 31, 1980 — Cooke marries Las Vegas socialite Jeanne Maxwell Williams. They divorce 10 months later.

Jan. 13, 1981 — Cooke hires San Diego offensive coordinator Joe Gibbs to coach the Redskins.

Jan. 30, 1983 — The Redskins win Super Bowl XVII, beating Miami 27-17.

1985 — Cooke buys the Los Angeles Daily News from the Chicago Tribune Co.

July 24, 1987 — Cooke marries third wife, Suzanne Martin. She later claimed that the marriage was contingent upon her aborting a fetus conceived by Cooke. After the wedding, she decided to have the baby and the marriage was dissolved after 73 days.

Aug. 28, 1987 — Saying the Redskins are losing money, Cooke announces plans for new stadium.

Jan. 31, 1988 — Redskins win Super Bowl XXII, beating Denver 42-10.

May 5, 1990 — Cooke marries Marlena Remallo Chalmers, who served 3½ months in federal prison in the 1980s for conspiring to import cocaine into the country. The marriage is declared void 3½ years later because Chalmers' divorce from a previous husband was ruled invalid.

Jan. 26, 1992 — Redskins win Super Bowl XXVI, beating Buffalo 37-24.

Aug. 24, 1992 — Redskins move into Redskin Park, Cooke's new state-of-the-art training facility in Ashburn, Va.

March 5, 1993 — Gibbs resigns, citing personal reasons, ending one of the greatest coaching careers in NFL history.

July 1995 — Cooke re-marries Marlena Remallo Chalmers.

Sept. 11, 1995 — Cooke's eldest son, Ralph Kent Cooke, who ran Cooke's horse breeding farm in Lexington, Ky., dies at 58.

March 13, 1996 — After eight years of rejection from the District of Columbia and from suburban jurisdictions in Virginia and Maryland, Cooke secures a place to build his new stadium. He signs a contract for a 78,600-seat, $160 million complex on a farm in Landover, Md. He later coined a postmark for the venue — Raljon — after his two sons, John Kent Cooke and the late Ralph Kent Cooke.

Nov. 10, 1996 — Cooke falls ill as he sits in the owner's box at RFK Stadium during the Redskins-Arizona Cardinals game. He is hospitalized for five days, and starts spending the bulk of his time at his northwest Washington estate rather than his expansive ranch in Middleburg, Va.

Dec. 22, 1996 — Cooke misses Redskins final game at RFK Stadium because of osteoarthritis, the only home game he missed after moving to Washington.

April 6, 1997 — Cooke dies of cardiac arrest after collapsing at his northwest Washington home. Sept. 14, 1997 — The first home game is scheduled for the Redskins' new stadium.

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/redskins/longterm/cooke/articles/mediaprofile.htm

Jack Kent Cooke Profile

Source: 1996 Washington Redskins Media Guide

Source: The Washington Redskins

Jack Kent Cooke once described himself as "an indomitable optimist." That spirit of determination was never more tested than in his eight-year quest to finance and build a modern state-of-the-art football stadium for "the best fans in the world."

John Hawkins, writing for the Washington Times wrote ... "They don't stop to think about how owners of sports franchises in other cities hold the towns hostage: 'Build me a new stadium or I'm taking my team elsewhere.' Cooke doesn't want your tax money. He's not blackmailing to move the Redskins to Iowa. He just wants the chance to build his own ballpark. His money. His legacy. Your playground."

On March 13, 1996, Jack Kent Cooke, Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening, and Prince George's County Executive Wayne Curry signed a contract paving the way for the immediate start of construction of the new home of the Redskins.

When the stadium is completed for the 1997 season, the 78,600 seat modern, state-of-the-art outdoor natural grass stadium will include over 280 executive suites, as well as 15,000 club seats.

Most important to Redskins fans is Mr. Cooke's unwavering decision not to charge personal seat licensing fees (PSL's) for the Redskins new stadium.

"Yes, I am the owner of the Washington Redskins," Mr. Cooke recently told WJLA-TV sports anchor Rene Knott. "But more important, I am the trustee for the best bloody fans on the face of the earth. I have no right, morally or legally, in my opinion, to move the franchise. Charging those great fans a PSL is something that I just won't do. It never crossed my mind. Not even once."

The indomitable optimist. "I have always had a will to succeed, to win, however you want to phrase it," said Mr. Cooke to Barry Lorge, the former sports editor of The San Diego Union. "I think most kids have that, but it's knocked out of them because as young men they try so many things, and they fail ... And they settle for less than the best."

It was in 1974 when Jack Kent Cooke became the majority owner of the Redskins. More than 200 victories and four Super Bowls later, his enthusiasm is as boundless as ever.

"If there is anything more exciting, more invigorating, more tantalizing, more worrisome, more ebullient in the world than owning a franchise like the Washington Redskins, I wish someone would tell me what it is," said Mr. Cooke recently. "It is the best fun there is."

Mr. Cooke has seen to that himself, thanks to an unwavering commitment to winning. In the 21 years, since he became the majority owner of the Redskins, the team is 214-144, a .597 percentage. They have been to the playoffs 11 times, captured four NFC championships and won three Super Bowl titles.

Through it all, Mr. Cooke has been the one constant, emerging as the persona of an organization that has become a model franchise on the field and in the community.

The latest example came this past spring. Mr. Cooke volunteered a personal contribution of $3 million for a recreation center for the youth of Prince George's County, MD, as well as $1.5 million in the form of scholarships.

Hawkins of The Washington Times also wrote this of Mr. Cooke: "No collection of gray suits and board rooms shield him from the street. No collection of guards and gates protect his Middleburg (Va) estate. He owns the Redskins by himself. He runs the show. He returns your calls. He writes his own letters."

Few can duplicate the success this formula has generated for Mr. Cooke over the years. He has won the NBA Championship with the Lakers, the Super Bowl with the Redskins, International League pennants with the independent Toronto Maple Leafs baseball club, a North American soccer championship with the 1967 Los Angeles Wolves and was the promoter for the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden in 1971.

"Mr. Cooke has shown over the years that he wants to win and will do whatever it takes to help his team win," says the Redskins third-year head coach Norv Turner. "As a coach, he is the kind of owner you want, someone who will give you the resources to do your job."

As with the many other successes in his life, it's been Mr. Cooke's intuition for recognizing ability and character that hat served as the foundation for his achievements with the Redskins.

It was that intuition that led him to Turner, a young, hard-working, assistant coach with a keen offensive mind and no head coaching experience, matching almost exactly the resume of another coach Mr. Cooke introduced to Redskins fans in 1981.

That coach was Joe Gibbs who went on to win 140 games and three Super Bowls in 12 seasons, and a place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

"Norv is the most professional, dedicated, intelligent young football brain I have run across," says Mr. Cooke. "I have such complete irrevocable confidence in Norv. Nothing in my mind will change it. We're lucky to have him guiding the Redskins."

Mr. Cooke has what associates describe as a sixth sense for business. He also has a sixth sense in discovering young, untapped talent and turning that talent into greatness. It's been that way from the beginning.

While owner of the Maple Leafs, his minor league baseball team, Mr. Cooke had an infielder on his team named Sparky Anderson. At the owner's suggestion, Anderson stopped playing and became the manager of the Maple Leafs in 1964. Thirty-two years later, Anderson is on route to baseball's Hall of Fame.

And Mr. Cooke does not stop with the best people. In August of 1992, the new Redskin training facility opened. The state-of-the-art Redskin Park includes three grass and one astroturf practice field, spacious weight room, locker room, training and equipment facilities along with large team meeting rooms and office space. Located in Ashburn, VA, the 75,000 square foot building is buffered by 161 acres of rural countryside. It is regarded as the finest training facility in the pros.

Another of Mr. Cooke's buildings bears a similar appelation. In 1967, as Chairman of the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers and NHL's Los Angeles Kings, Mr. Cooke ran into a concrete wall with that city's Coliseum Commission on an arena lease for his teams. He retaliated by building the first privately funded indoor arena in the United States. Chick Hearn, the voice of the Lakers, called it the Fabulous Forum.

While the Redskins may be the crown jewel of his sporting interests, they do not stand alone in his successees. For over forty years, Mr. Cooke has been a premier sportsman, beginning with minor league baseball. He purchased the Maple Leafs in 1951 and a year later was named Minor League Executive of the Year by The Sporting News.

As owner of the Maple Leafs, Mr. Cooke formed a close association with Branch Rickey, and developed much of his sporting philosophy through their friendship.

Then came expansion into professional basketball and hockey in Los Angeles, where he became Chairman of the Board and President of California Sports, Inc., corporate parent of the Forum, the Kings and the Lakers.

Chances are one of the records set by his World Champion 1971-72 Laker team — a remarkable 33 consecutive game winning streak — may even outlast the Forum. In addition, Mr. Cooke laid the foundation of Laker championships for years to come when he traded for Kareem Abdul Jabbar and drafted and signed Magic Johnson.

Mr. Cooke's sporting interests also included a flirtation with golf, becoming a scratch player, and professional soccer ownership, but horses and horse racing has remained a continued passion. He purchased Elmendorf Racing and Breeding Farm in hopes of producing a Kentucky Derby winner in the future. It is one of the few prizes that has eluded him in sports or business, but chances are that will change if history is a barometer.

Born October 25, 1912 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, Mr. Cooke was an avid hockey player and fan. He played in the Ontario Hockey Association, and was offered a scholarship to play for the University of Michigan. However, the Depression redirected him to a career in business, beginning as an encyclopedia salesman. He later joined Northern Broadcasting and Publishing, Ltd; and before he was 26, was one-third partner in Thomson Cooke Newspapers. Subsequently a 50-50 partner with Roy Thomson, the two men operated radio stations and newspapers throughout Canada. Thomson was later elevated to the peerage becoming Lord Thomson of Fleet. Their friendly business partnership lasted until Thomson passes away in 1985.

Mr. Cooke still maintains his interest in the communications industry with ownership of the Los Angeles Daily News. His hand also extends to many other endeavors, including ownership of the Chrysler Building, cable television systems and real estate enterprises.

Mr. Cooke's father, Ralph E., was a picture frame manufacturer. His mother, Nancy, helped him develop an interest in music. As a youngster he played clarinet and saxophone, playing in bands in Toronto with Percy Faith, famous orchestra leader and composer, and the late Murray McEachern, outstanding trombonist. Mr. Cooke still plays the piano, and is a member of ASCAP and BMI, having written and published many songs.

Variety accentuates his life. His love for the English language is reflected in every conversation and he continues to read 60 to 70 books a year. His hobbies include antiques, wine, and riding his prize collection of Tennessee Walkers.

Mr. Cooke still finds time to take in practice of Redskin Park, rain or shine. He and his wife, Marlena, also make regular, mid-summer trips to the team's training camp to check the progress of the Redskins.

Finally, John Hawkins of The Washington Times had to say this about Nancy Cooke's eldest son, ". . . he knows how to grip the reins. The good Lord dressed Jack Kent Cooke in a bulletproof vest, gave him a ready holster and opened his eyes wide to the promise land. For those who never get out of the barn, that puts him on top of the American dream. The lead horse is riding toward the sunset. Can you think of a more suitable man to have climbed in the saddle? No, especially if that man continues to be 'an indomitable optimist.' "

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/redskins/longterm/cooke/articles/box.htm

At RFK, the End of an Aerie

By Frank Ahrens

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, December 23, 1996; Page C01

Jack Kent Cooke's legendary owner's box at RFK Stadium beat a whimpering exit into Power Washington history yesterday.

It should have been more noteworthy. It was the last NFL game in the storied stadium's existence — Cooke is scheduled to move the Redskins next season to a stadium currently under construction near Landover. The foe was the hated Dallas Cowboys, the Redskins' arch-enemies since the 1960s. All through the '80s, Cooke's box was a weekly check on Who's In and Who's Out in the Washington social scene. If you got invited to The Box, you'd made it.

But the sum of history was no match yesterday for a recent spate of misfortune. After three dismal seasons, the Redskins momentarily looked like a good team this year before tanking again halfway through the season, missing the playoffs and making yesterday's 37-10 win meaningless. Late last month, the 84-year-old Cooke, after suffering an attack of osteoarthritis, missed a game for the first time since he moved to the area in 1978. He came back for a few more games but was absent again yesterday, putting a pall over the proceedings. How can it be Jack Kent Cooke's box with no Jack Kent Cooke?

Cooke's box was filled with decidedly B-list celebrities yesterday. The biggest star was probably retired Gen. Colin Powell. After that, the luminosity dimmed. There was Virginia Gov. George Allen, his wife and mother. Former governor Douglas Wilder was there with his wife. So were British Ambassador John Kerr and former senator Eugene McCarthy, but they're both regulars. Not a great day for stargazing.

The invitation to Cooke's private box, which is poised halfway up the stadium above the 40-yard line, has been the second most prestigious social invitation in Washington, after a White House dinner. Sitting in Cooke's box, however, is a more high-profile honor than dining with the president. People know you've been to the White House only if they read the invitation list. Box-watching at RFK Stadium has been the closest thing Washington has had to genuine celebrity-spotting, as Cooke's roost is visible from most of the stadium. "Hey, look up in Cooke's box," goes the drill. "It's George McGovern." Then, back to the business at hand: "Hey, Bud man! Two right here!"

Many of Cooke's guests have been regulars since 1978 — people such as CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl, columnists and sports nuts George Will and Carl Rowan, and longtime Washington figures such as lawyer Lloyd Hand. Vice Presidents Gore and Quayle have come. So have Powell, former senator Paul Laxalt and, of course, Cooke's wife, Marlene Ramallo Chalmers Cooke, whose youthful, elegant presence next to her aged husband, with both often wearing huge black sunglasses, conjured up the memory of Aristotle and Jackie Onassis.

Some guests are old friends of Cooke; some are Washington political, social or journalism heavyweights. The four dozen or so invitations are handed out the week before each game; Cooke doesn't have a preseason list for certain games.

Bill Regardie, editor of the now-defunct Regardie's magazine and once a regular in the box, thinks he got on Cooke's list because Cooke used to own a magazine that, like Regardie's, sometimes tweaked the powerful. When Regardie got his first invitation, he felt he had really made it in the Washington scene.

"This was about '85, when the magazine was just starting to take off," Regardie says. "Once I got there, it hit me that I was in the club now. Even if your fellow invited guests, people like Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern, didn't know who you were, just the fact that you were there says, 'Okay, you've made it.' It was a heady time for me. I thought it was the greatest [bleeping] thing in the world."

But Regardie also got a lesson from Cooke on how the stratospheric Washington social order works. About the fourth week of the 1989 season, Regardie published an editorial cartoon that showed Washington dignitaries bowing down to a monarchal Cooke for the right to sit in the box. Cooke never called Regardie to complain. He just didn't invite him back the rest of the season.

The following spring, while Regardie was lunching at Duke Zeibert's (remember the Power '80s?), Cooke came over to him and said simply: "Willie — about that cartoon. I'm sure you just got some bad advice. I would hope you would come back to my box this year as my guest."

But things would never be the same.

Before the cartoon, "for three years, I had seats A12 and A13," Regardie says. "They were the best seats in the house. Right in the middle. They had a heater under your feet. The waitresses were right behind you." He pauses. "You can see how I'm going on about those seats. Anyway, I was invited back the next season, but my seats were in the second row. I never made it back to the front row."

His favorite memory is of a game he took his father-in-law to as his guest. Cooke greeted the man he'd never met before and chatted with him at length. Then the secretary of state entered the box. (It's notable that Regardie remembers Cooke's words exactly but not the name of the secretary of state.)

"Mr. Cooke took my father-in-law by the arm and said, 'Sam, do you know the secretary of state?' " Regardie said.

Regardie hasn't been invited to a game this season. But he understands how the pecking order works: His magazine folded. That's how it goes. Tough town, baby.

One other longtime box guest, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared Cooke would think it "poor form" to talk on the record about such an honor, recalled the lavish brunches, the ever-attentive waitresses and Cooke's glee when his beloved team won.

"When a particularly good play would happen, like a touchdown, Jack would walk up and down the aisle in the box, chatting, laughing," he says. "When they lost or did poorly, he didn't go into a blue funk, but he walked less."

Even if Regardie was banished to the second row, he was never put in the back row.

"In the front row, you've got a table in front of you for your food and drinks," he says. "In the second row, you've got this little six-inch ledge. Behind that, you're putting your food on the floor between your feet." Wow. Tough.

Indeed, the seating position of dignitaries in regard to Cooke, who always sat in the lower right corner of the box (as seen from the field), sometimes received as much analysis and speculation as the positioning of Politburo apparatchiks near the premier during the missile parades in Moscow during the Cold War.

In the past few years, when Cooke was throwing darts all over the region's map, trying to decide where to build his new stadium, it was fun to watch who was in his box from week to week. Say, there's D.C. Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly. Maybe Cooke's staying in the District. Next week: Say, there's Wilder. Clearly, Cooke's building his stadium in Virginia.

The new stadium will have an owner's box of about the same size, though considerably plusher. But there's no telling whether a good seat in Landover will have the same cachet for Washington status seekers. And yesterday's show offered few hints. At RFK, Cooke's box was a galaxy of handpicked stars assembled in a tight little universe with the owner at the center, dishing out benevolence like sunlight. Yesterday was a gathering of old friends who came even though they knew Cooke wouldn't be there. Sure, it was a good spread and a free game. But maybe it was also a homage to their sick benefactor, a way of thanking him for letting them feel like real Somebodies.

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/redskins/longterm/cooke/articles/quotes.htm

Jack Kent Cooke Quotes

Associated Press

Sunday, April 6, 1997; 6:40 p.m. EDT

Quotes made by and about Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, who died Sunday:

"I am in a state of ecstasy. Never mind that nonsense about euphoria and so on, it is sheer unadulterated, uncompromising ecstasy.'' — Cooke, during the locker room celebration after the Redskins won the 1983 Super Bowl.

"Having this interest here in the Redskins is the chief hobby of my life. And I would bet you that if you had your choice of any hobby in the world, an angel fairy came down and said, '[You can have anything] in the world you would like to own,' I wouldn't be surprised if you said a football club and particularly the Washington Redskins.'' — Jack Kent Cooke, at the Redskins mini-camp in spring 1996.

"Nobody's going to write a book about me [50 years from now], because nobody's going to find anything worth writing a book about.'' — Cooke, summer 1995.

"I have spoken to many, many Indian chiefs who say they have no objection whatsoever to the nickname. As far as I'm concerned, it's a dead issue. I'm not even interested in it. The name of the Redskins will remain the Redskins.'' — Jack Kent Cooke, March 1994.

"I don't intend to die.'' — Cooke, quoted in Sports Illustrated, Dec. 16, 1991.

"I didn't like him as a person. Nobody did. He wouldn't let you. The man didn't know how to relax.'' — Hot Rod Hundley, who worked for Cooke as a broadcaster for the Los Angeles Lakers, from the same SI article.

"He was a tough negotiator. He wouldn't have made all his money if he had been a softy. ... I regret that he didn't live long enough to see the stadium completed. It was one of his dreams. In fact, he was almost obsessed with it.'' — D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, who haggled with Cooke for several years over a new stadium.

"He was one of those rare people who was a tough guy, a super-smart guy and he was always better when things were at their worst. We are all really going to miss him, particularly the people in Washington. I just sent him a letter three months ago and told him that I hoped we could spend some time in heaven, kind of share things together. He assured me that was going to be the case. I feel good about that.'' — Joe Gibbs, who won three Super Bowls as Redskins coach under Cooke from 1981-1993.

"His straight-shooting style and love of the fans earned him respect and admiration throughout the sports world.'' — President Clinton "Jack Kent Cooke will be remembered as one of the premier owners in NFL history and one of the great sportsmen and entrepreneurs of American business. A self-made man of wide-ranging talents, Jack Kent Cooke loved the game, loved to win and knew how to field a winner, including three Super Bowl championship teams.'' — NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/redskins/longterm/cooke/articles/cookeob7.htm

A Washington Monument

By Bart Barnes

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, April 7, 1997; Page A1

He was a high school dropout who began his business career by selling encyclopedias door-to-door during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But before he was done, Jack Kent Cooke was a titan of business and professional sports, amassing a fortune in communications and real estate and owning several teams from coast to coast — most notably his beloved Washington Redskins.

Cooke, who was 84 when he died yesterday, was a financial wizard who rose to the highest brackets of wealth in America, with holdings estimated in recent years between $700 million and $1.2 billion. Those included cable television systems, newspapers, the leasehold to the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, extensive holdings in stocks and bonds, and a thoroughbred racing horse stable and breeding farm in Kentucky. In Los Angeles, he owned the Lakers basketball team and the Kings hockey team, which he sold in 1979.

As the hands-on owner of the Redskins, Cooke presided over a team that won the National Football League's Super Bowl after the 1982, 1987 and 1991 seasons. He came East from California in 1979 and took operating control of the football team shortly thereafter. One of his early moves was to hire Joe Gibbs, who coached the Redskins to the three championships, as well as a loss in a fourth Super Bowl.

More recently, Cooke had been a high-profile figure on the Washington political landscape in his highly publicized and controversial seven-year quest to build a 78,600-seat stadium for the Redskins. After extensive negotiations with local officials in the District, Alexandria, and Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties, and with the governors of Maryland and Virginia, he finally reached an agreement to build Jack Kent Cooke Stadium in Prince George's.

It was once said that Cooke could "sell stoves at a shipwreck." He was a master wheeler-dealer, and, more than anything else, he loved to win. To an author who once sought an interview for a book on the world's five greatest salesmen, he replied indignantly, "Sir, I am not one of five anything!" He was a man of limitless energy who rarely took vacations or days off, and he often said of himself, "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

He was pompous, overbearing, rude, impatient and arrogant, but he also could be charming and courtly. He was engaging in conversation, self-educated and widely knowledgeable in fields as diverse as architecture, music, sports, literature and politics. His English was precise, and he often corrected others' grammatical errors. He read voraciously — newspapers, magazines, novels, poetry, biographies, even the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. He was married five times to four different women. At times, he called women "pets" and men and women "darlings."

Cooke, who once smoked up to five packs of cigarettes a day, was diagnosed with arteriosclerotic heart disease in the 1970s. He had frequent angina that was treated with medication. "Never bothersome," he once said of the pain, "and I wouldn't admit it even if it were."

Although grieved by turmoil in his marital life, Cooke often enjoyed a life of caviar and champagne: One evening in the early 1980s found him in Manhattan with his second wife, Jeanne, dining at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where he stayed in the hotel's private towers wing, attending a Broadway play ("Woman of the Year"), then dancing in the Rainbow Room, 65 floors atop the RCA (now General Electric) Building, gazing at one of his prized investments: the Chrysler Building. Cooke's dining companions over the years ranged from TV stars such as Lorne Greene of the 1960s series "Bonanza" to government heavyweights such as William J. Casey, the late director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

At Kent Farms, his 640-acre estate in Middleburg, in the heart of Virginia's hunt country, Cooke presided over his far-flung business empire, known as Jack Kent Cooke Inc., while living the life of a gentleman farmer. At a moment's notice, his stable attendant could saddle up his Tennessee walking horses should Cooke be in the mood for a ride. Two pilots saw to it that his private jet was ever ready for takeoff should Cooke need to travel.

Claustrophobic all his life, he detested air travel and riding in elevators. "When I fly to the West Coast [in a private plane], I can fly for 2½ hours or so, so my trips are punctuated by a stop in a little town called Salina, Kansas," Cooke said in a 1988 interview. As for elevators, Cooke said he survived by "gritting . . . teeth . . . clenching . . . fists."

In his later years, Cooke looked like an aging Shakespearean actor, customarily dressing in expensive tweed jackets and gray flannel trousers and often sporting kangaroo leather boots. At Kent Farms, he worked behind an 18th-century Chippendale partner's desk, near a boardroom decorated at times with framed tributes from current and former employees. "An honest and compassionate man," wrote Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the former Lakers center. "Long live the king," wrote Joe Gibbs, the former Redskins coach.

A half-mile from his office, Cooke lived in a stucco and glass house that Washington Post staff writer Bill Brubaker once described as "post-Renaissance Malibu with its Bonnard art, Georgian silver, electric beds and all-weather sun room." His household staff had standing instructions to be "extremely polite" when answering the telephone because "Mr. Cooke has many distinguished citizens of the country calling him," Brubaker noted in a 1988 profile. At various times, Cooke also had apartments in the District — one at the Watergate — and he lived in recent years in a $2 million house in Woodley Park.

Cooke acquired the Redskins in stages more than 25 years, beginning in November 1960 with the purchase of a 25 percent stake in the team for $350,000. Only two months earlier, Cooke, a native of Canada, had become a U.S. citizen by a special act of Congress, which passed a private law granting him U.S. residency retroactive to 1950, thus complying with a requirement for U.S. citizenship. The legislation was sponsored by Rep. Francis E. Walter (D-Pa.), who told the House Judiciary Committee that Cooke was ready to give up his "wealth, status and social position" in Canada "to build a new future for himself and his family in the United States of America."

After Redskins founder George Preston Marshall died in 1969, Cooke acquired more shares in the franchise. By 1979, he owned 85 percent of the team when he moved to Northern Virginia, and shortly thereafter he took operating control from Washington lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, who had been chief operating officer. In February 1985, he became sole owner of the Redskins when he bought the last block of outstanding stock from Williams.

His total investment in the franchise was believed to have been around $15‚million, less than 10 percent of what he could have reasonably expected to get had he put the team up for sale. But the Redskins were more than a business matter, Cooke always insisted. He called them "the greatest hobby a man could have."

At Cooke's expense, hundreds of the Washington area's politically, socially and financially powerful and well-connected traveled by chartered jet to the Redskins' Super Bowls. A request to join him in the owner's box at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium for a Redskins home game was among the most coveted invitations in the nation's capital. On a given game day, Cooke's guest list might include the governor of Maryland or Virginia, the mayor of Washington, leading members of Congress, the director of a federal agency or a Cabinet member, judges and influential figures of television and the press. Cooke, a Republican, counted high-profile Democrats and Republicans among his friends.

To clear Cooke's postgame passage through traffic-clogged streets around the stadium, the D.C. government routinely provided a motorcycle police officer to escort his chauffeur-driven limousine.

Jack Kent Cooke was born Oct. 25, 1912, in Hamilton, Ontario, the eldest of four children in an upper-middle-class family. His parents had emigrated from South Africa in 1910.

As a youth, Cooke was a standout ice hockey center, and, until the last few months of his life, he still moved about with the easy confidence of an accomplished athlete, chin up and shoulders back. In his middle and old age, he watched his diet scrupulously, often eating fruit salads and oat bran muffins for lunch, and he held his weight to a trim 158 pounds.

His father, a picture frame manufacturer, went broke in the 1929 stock market crash, and the young Cooke quit school and went "out into the marvelous business world," as he once put it, selling encyclopedias door-to-door. A gifted musician, he also played saxophone and clarinet in a Toronto hotel, and for a time he was a band leader under the name of Oley Kent. Later in life, he told friends that he would have been a professional musician had he been more talented. As their owner, Cooke would compose the Lakers' and the Kings' fight songs.

When he was 21, Cooke married 17-year-old Jeannie Carnegie. He paid for their wedding trip in Western Canada by selling encyclopedias along the way. He also sold soap.

Switching career paths in 1937, he talked his way into a $23.85-a-week job as manager of a radio station in Stratford, Ontario, that was barely passing financial muster. In short order, Cooke turned the operation into a money-maker, catching the eye of the station's owner, Roy Thompson, who would become world famous as Lord Thompson, the Fleet Street publishing giant. Thompson promoted Cooke to manager of his Toronto office and soon thereafter offered him a chance to buy one-third of another station.

Cooke snapped up the offer, and he and Thompson were partners in Canadian newspaper and broadcasting business ventures for almost a decade and a half. They bought low, sold high and held onto those operations that turned a tidy profit. By the late 1940s, they controlled a chain of newspapers, magazines and radio stations, a motion picture production company, an advertising agency and a plastics company. After their partnership ended in the early 1950s, Cooke ran Toronto's most successful radio station, CKEY, and a Canadian magazine publishing company until 1961.

It was in 1951 that Cooke made his entry into the financial arena of professional sports, acquiring the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team of the Class AAA International League.

At the box office and in the box scores, the team was poor, with low attendance and a losing record. Cooke figured he could boost attendance with such showmanship tactics as diaper-changing contests at home plate and offers of free admission to anyone accompanied by a black cat on Friday the 13th. He was right. The next year, the Maple Leafs led the minor leagues in paid attendance, and they reached the playoffs for the first time in seven years. In 1952, the Sporting News named Cooke minor-league executive of the year.

Cooke's acuity in the business office was matched by a sharp eye for on-the-field leadership potential. At Toronto in the early 1960s, he launched the managerial career of an obscure infielder named Sparky Anderson, who would become the first manager to win the World Series with teams in both the National and American leagues.

But by then Cooke had grown restless in Canada, and he was looking for new fields on which to play. In 1960, he moved to Los Angeles, where he bought a house in Beverly Hills — a belated 25th-wedding-anniversary gift to his first wife.

He was worth an estimated $15‚million by then, including $1 million in U.S. investments. Among them were an advertising agency and a recording production company. In 1959, he negotiated the purchase of a country and western radio station in suburban Los Angeles, and the next year he became a U.S. citizen by special act of Congress, citizenship being a Federal Communications Commission requirement to own a radio station. The FCC later revoked the station's license, citing as one reason two fraudulent listener contests that Cooke helped devise.

Shortly after his $350,000 purchase of 25 percent of the Redskins, Cooke abruptly decided to retire. He said he needed a rest, but he soon grew bored with playing golf, and he went back to work.

In 1964, he created a cable television company to bring high-quality television reception to areas with poor picture quality. The company would later merge into Teleprompter Corp., which was the nation's largest cable TV company during the 1970s, with Cooke as its largest shareholder.

He acquired the Lakers for $5.2 million in 1965. Among the players he would sign for the club were superstars Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Earvin "Magic" Johnson. He also acquired a National Hockey League franchise for Los Angeles for $2 million and was about to launch the Kings in 1966 when he reached an impasse with the L.A. Coliseum Commission over playing dates in the city's sports arena.

Cooke wanted exclusive rights to the arena 365 days a year. The Coliseum Commission said no. Cooke said fine; he'd build his own arena. Fifteen months later, he opened the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, circular in design, with Greek columns, which cost him $16 million.

In 1971, he originated closed-circuit telecasts of boxing matches to theater audiences with the first Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden in New York. Each fighter was paid what then was an astonishing fee of $2.5 million, and the business of prizefighting was changed forever.

Cooke suffered a heart attack in 1973, about a year after he had gained control of Teleprompter, but he cut short his convalescence to travel to New York for nine months of tough and protracted negotiations for loan extensions to save the company from financial overcommitments by its previous management. Successful in those dealings, Cooke returned to Los Angeles to run his sports empire from the Forum. In 1981, Teleprompter would be acquired by Westinghouse. For his shares in the company, Cooke would get $70 million, plus a $4.65 million consulting contract.

By then, his 42-year marriage to Jeannie Carnegie Cooke had collapsed. She left him in July 1976, writing him, "Unfortunately, I can't measure up to your competitive nature." A 30-month property settlement battle ended in 1979 with Cooke agreeing to an even split of all his assets, which at the time were estimated at $80 million. The final judgment was signed by Las Vegas Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Wapner, who later became known to millions of television viewers as the judge on TV's "People's Court."

A court-appointed psychiatrist, Allen E. Davis, testified during the proceedings that Jeannie Cooke had "described her marital relations as having been extremely stressful for her ... because of her husband's aggressiveness and demands on her to accompany him on all business trips, and frequent business-related entertaining, such that she felt 'shaky inside for years,' had visible tremors, and became so depressed she attempted suicide four times between 1965 and 1976."

Jack Kent Cooke would later call that divorce "one of the worst mistakes I ever made in my life."

But he moved to sever his West Coast ties soon after the final decree was signed, relocating in Northern Virginia and selling the Kings, the Lakers, the Forum and a 13,000-acre ranch in the Sierra foothills for $67.5 million. That same year, he spent $87 million for several midtown Manhattan properties, including the right to lease space in the Chrysler Building through 2029, a form of ownership.

In October 1980, he married sculptor Jeanne Maxwell Williams Wilson, who had been director of women's events at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where Cooke had moved after his first wife left him. They had been dating for three years, but their marriage lasted 10 months.

On Jan. 5, 1981, Cooke opened a new chapter in Redskins history by firing coach Jack Pardee and hiring Joe Gibbs, who would lead the team to its three Super Bowl championships.

During his years in the Washington area, Cooke's business fortune increased more than tenfold. While presiding over the Redskins, he engineered dozens of multimillion-dollar business deals, including the purchase in 1985 of the Los Angeles Daily News for $176 million, the acquisition and sale of cable television franchises from Syracuse, N.Y., to Alaska for a profit of $500 million, and the addition of real estate holdings in New York in addition to the Chrysler Building.

In 1984, he bought Elmendorf Farm, a 503-acre horse breeding farm near Lexington, Ky., which is at the heart of the world's most famous breeding ground for thoroughbreds. Its failure to produce a Kentucky Derby winner was a sporting and financial disappointment to Cooke, who had the farm on the market for $7.5 million when he died.

Cooke's eldest son, Ralph Kent Cooke, managed the Elmendorf Farm operation until he died of liver failure at 58 in September 1995. Ralph Kent Cooke had sided with his mother during his parents' divorce proceedings, and his father had declared him a nonperson for two years, but they later reconciled. At his death, Ralph Kent Cooke was awaiting trial on charges of possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia resulting from a raid on the farm by Lexington police, postal inspectors and federal drug agents in March 1995. He pleaded not guilty.

In his personal life, Cooke's 1987 third marriage, to Suzanne Martin, 43 years younger than he, lasted 10 weeks. They had met at a swimming pool two years earlier when Cooke was on a business trip to Florida. Pregnant when they were married, she promised Cooke that she would get an abortion the day after the wedding, but she said she was unable to go through with it after checking into the hospital. Furious that she had not kept the promise, Cooke divorced her. Their daughter, Jacqueline Kent Cooke, was born in January 1988, the same month Cooke's Redskins won their second Super Bowl.

On May 5, 1990, Cooke married Marlene Ramallo Chalmers, a native of Bolivia who had served 3½ months in a federal prison for conspiracy to import less than a kilogram of cocaine. The marriage was annulled in 1994 on the grounds that a divorce from her previous husband was invalid.

They were remarried in July 1995. He was 82 at the time, and her age was described in various court documents as 38, 42 and numbers in between.

"Love is lovelier the second time around," Jack Kent Cooke said at that marriage, quoting the lyrics of a popular song. Additional survivors include a son from his first marriage, John Kent Cooke, an executive with the Redskins.

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/redskins/longterm/cooke/articles/cooke7.htm

Redskins Lose Their Guiding Force

By R.H. Melton and Richard Justice

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, April 7, 1997; Page A1

Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, who built the NFL franchise into a three-time Super Bowl champion and was nearing completion of a monumental new stadium in suburban Maryland, died yesterday after suffering a heart attack at his home in Northwest Washington. He was 84.

Cooke, who had a long history of heart and respiratory problems, was pronounced dead at George Washington University Hospital at 12:09 p.m after collapsing in his library yesterday morning, said Robert Shesser, the chief of the hospital's emergency room, who was on duty at the time.

Shesser told reporters that Cooke did not respond to "state of the art" emergency medical treatment that included attempted cardiopulmonary resuscitation, respiration and the application of drugs by D.C. fire department personnel and hospital physicians. Cooke's heart was not beating when paramedics arrived at his home, Shesser added.

With Cooke at the hospital were his wife, Marlene Ramallo Cooke; his son, John Kent Cooke; his daughter-in-law; and his grandson. Funeral arrangements were incomplete yesterday.

Redskins officials and Cooke aides said they expected little disruption in overall management of the team or the final phases of the $175 million, 78,600-seat stadium in Landover, just inside the Capital Beltway in Prince George's County.

John Kent Cooke, the team president, has told associates that he intends to keep the Redskins in the family and assume control of day-to-day operations. The younger Cooke, who has held wide-ranging authority over the team for the past several years, declined to comment yesterday and instructed his staff and all coaches to refrain from publicly discussing his father's death.

In a region whose public figures often tend toward the bland, the elder Cooke was anything but — a natty, silver-haired business mogul who suffered fools and uncooperative politicos badly. He was a contradictory figure, a big ego in a diminutive body, a dealmaker who got his way by bullying, cajoling and caressing — sometimes all at once.

As word of Cooke's death spread, there was an outpouring of testimonials from the White House and elected leaders across the Washington area, including local jurisdictions where Cooke had tried unsuccessfully for 10 years to find a new home for his beloved team.

That search, which ended two years ago with an agreement on the Landover site, was emblematic of Cooke. His exchanges with local leaders were oversized and dramatic — in public with then-Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, he was at his courtly best; in private with then-D.C. Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly, he could be overbearing and at his chauvinistic worst.

"So long as I agreed with him, he was very pleasant," recalled former Maryland governor William Donald Schaefer. "There is no negotiating — it's his way only. 'I'm Jack Kent Cooke. This is the way its going to be.' "

Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Prince George's), who also negotiated with Cooke, recalled the owner's sizable ego.

Miller said he once declined an invitation to sit in Cooke's exclusive box in Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium but promised to look up at Cooke from his own end-zone seats.

"There's probably 40,000 people who look up at you," Miller recalled telling Cooke.

Cooke replied: "No, all 58,000 look up: I'm part of the show."

Wilder said yesterday it was sad that Cooke did not live long enough "to see his dream come to fruition" in Landover. "He used to kid with me a lot and say, 'Look, I'm not interested in a memorial stadium. I want to see something,' " Wilder said.

Virginia Gov. George Allen ®, whose father once coached the Redskins, described Cooke yesterday as an "extraordinary lion in the world of business and professional sports ... an unequaled competitor."

Joe Gibbs, who coached all three of Cooke's Super Bowl champion teams, yesterday credited Cooke with making him a professional head coach for the first time 16 years ago.

"I was 40 years old and no one took a chance on me," Gibbs said yesterday from Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, where the racing team he owns was competing in the Interstate Batteries 500. "That showed the kind of guts he had. He gambled and went with me, a nobody."

Before his health began to fail, Cooke was a regular at Redskin Park, the team's practice facility in Ashburn. He frequently drove his black BMW into his reserved parking spot, then, accompanied by his spaniel Coco, drove a golf cart down to the field area to watch the team practice.

He would sit through bitterly cold days and sweltering heat, commenting on virtually every play and every player. He would chide General Manager Charley Casserly for draft choices that displeased him and compliment him on high-performance players.

Once, when a coach asked, "What are your dreams, Mr. Cooke?" the owner snapped: "I don't dream. I do."

Cooke was fastidious in his dress. Even if he was working in his office, he wore his dress clothes — slacks and loafers and shirts. He almost never left home without a blazer and his signature wraparound sunglasses.

He ate a small breakfast, had hot tea for lunch, then usually dinner at home, the old Duke Ziebert's or the Palm in downtown Washington. He spent weekends with his Tennessee walking horses or watching one of his thoroughbreds run.

Before Duke Ziebert's closed in 1994, Cooke would spend lunchtime of his favorite days — the Mondays after a Redskins victory — at a prominent table there, soaking up the congratulations of a city.

In an era when more and more teams are owned by corporations and managed by faceless bureaucrats, Cooke was a living, breathing, prone-to-temper, effusive-in-his-praise patriarch of a family-run team. And said so himself.

"If there is anything more exciting, more invigorating, more tantalizing, more worrisome, more ebullient in the world than owning a franchise like the Washington Redskins, I wish someone would tell me what it is," Cooke said recently. "It is the best fun there is."

His health had deteriorated in recent months. He had suffered a heart attack in 1973 and had been bothered by breathing difficulties and angina pain. In early November, he fell ill while watching the Redskins-Arizona Cardinals game at RFK and was diagnosed with a degenerative arthritic condition.

Cooke, who suffered increasing arthritic pain in his hands in his final months, missed the final two games at RFK but vowed to be well enough for the opening of his new stadium in September. Despite his failing health, Cooke — who was involved in virtually all aspects of the stadium's design and construction — went to the Landover site most Sundays to check its progress.

Yesterday, when paramedics from the D.C. fire department's rapid response unit arrived at Cooke's mansion in the 2800 block of Rock Creek Drive, they were led into the library, where Cooke was lying on the floor unconscious, and a woman, evidently Marlene Cooke, was "kneeling next to him ... just saying his name," said paramedic Kenneth Hatch.

That woman and another, Cooke's household nurse, said Cooke had collapsed while working at his desk, Hatch said.

Cooke, who was in pajamas, bathrobe and slippers, already was getting oxygen through a nasal cannula, a thin tube placed in his nose apparently by the nurse, according to Hatch. The paramedics began emergency procedures.

"He was not breathing, and he did not have a pulse at the time," Hatch said. A heart monitor showed Cooke was in "ventricular fibrillation," a rapid, disorganized rhythm that does not produce efficient pumping of blood and is typical in cardiac arrest.

Hatch administered an electrical shock to Cooke's chest with paddles, designed to get the heart's own natural electrical pacemaker back to a normal rhythm. "You try to shock [the heart] as quick as you can," Hatch said. "He did respond with "a very weak pulse rate, about 30" beats a minute — a rate too slow to get the heart pumping well, Hatch said.

By then, firefighters and other medical personnel with the ambulance had arrived, and they began "basic CPR," Hatch said. Meanwhile, an intravenous line was placed in Cooke's arm so they could administer a drug similar to adrenaline. Hatch placed a breathing tube down Cooke's windpipe and pumped oxygen by hand into his lungs.

As the team prepared Cooke to be taken to the ambulance, his heart went back to a rapid, chaotic rhythm, Hatch said. They shocked him again and "his heart went asystolic," Hatch said, meaning that equipment indicated a flat line with no activity, "no beating at all."

In the ambulance, the team continued emergency procedures, but Cooke's heartbeat never came back, Hatch said. They arrived at George Washington University Hospital at 11:37 a.m. Marlene Cooke was driven to the hospital by D.C. fire personnel, who followed behind the ambulance.

The fire department received the emergency call at 10:59 a.m., said Lt. William McLaughlin, chief supervisor of emergency medical services on duty yesterday.

The nurse who placed the emergency call said it was for an 84-year-old man but did not mention Cooke's name, another supervisor said. However, at the dispatch center, when a computer monitor showed the resident at that address was "Jack Cooke," those on duty realized they were responding to a call at the home of the Redskins owner.

During a 1992 interview, after announcing plans to build his new stadium in Alexandria, Cooke touched briefly on his own mortality, a subject he customarily avoided.

"I want to be buried in a burgundy and gold coffin," he said. "And when I'm gone, someone named Cooke is going to own the team. And when he's gone, someone else named Cooke is going to run the team."

Also that day, he had telephoned Gibbs and told him: "Joe, be honest with me, what are our prospects for this season?"

Gibbs said he felt good about the Redskins' chances of winning a second straight Super Bowl. "Well, Joe," Cooke said, "you know what I want? Three in a row!"

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/redskins/longterm/cooke/articles/skins7.htm

A Man of Riches Built His Team From a Trust Fund

By Richard Justice

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, April 7, 1997; Page C1

When Norv Turner walked into Jack Kent Cooke's office for the first time more than three years ago, he was uncertain he wanted to be the next coach of the Washington Redskins. The Arizona Cardinals were offering a huge deal, and Turner knew that if he returned to the Dallas Cowboys as an assistant coach for one more season, he probably would have his choice of a half-dozen other jobs.

He had been warned by friends around the NFL that the Redskins were out of talent, a franchise that needed a major roster overhaul. Turner knew that a lot of good coaches had their reputations ruined by getting into the wrong situations.

Turner had those feelings before he met Cooke, before he heard Cooke speak of his commitment to winning, before he heard Cooke tell Turner that this was the job for him.

The two men met for about an hour, and when Cooke invited Redskins General Manager Charley Casserly to join the meeting, he said: "Meet the new head coach of the Washington Redskins."

In that brief meeting, Turner experienced the charm and persuasive powers that Cooke had used on dozens of players and coaches during a four-decade career in sports. He was the rarest of owners: a hands-on manager who nevertheless trusted the instincts and expertise of his experts, someone who was willing to spend millions and millions of dollars to make sure that his teams had the best players, coaches and facilities that money could buy.

As news of his death spread throughout the sports world yesterday, Cooke was remembered as a one-of-a-kind entrepreneur, someonewho could alternately charm and bully, someone loved by some and feared by some, but someone respected for the first-rate organizations he put together.

Current employees of the Redskins, beginning with Turner and Casserly, declined comment yesterday at the request of John Kent Cooke, who apparently will assume control of the team. But around the country, many others reflected on a colorful and successful life.

"I've always said he is the most brilliant man I've ever known," said Los Angeles Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn, who became close to Cooke during his ownership of the NBA team. "You might be in his office and he could be talking on one subject that might be concerning a million dollars here or a million there with a sporting event or team. The phone might ring and it's somebody else talking a totally different subject. He'd go into that, talking large numbers of dollars. His mind was like a trip hammer. It never missed a beat. I would sit with my mouth open."

During 23 seasons as majority owner of the Redskins, Cooke established the franchise as one of the best in sports, one that went to four Super Bowls and made 10 playoff appearances. As owner of the Lakers, his championship 1971-72 team won an NBA record 33 consecutive games and in 1979 drafted Magic Johnson, which laid the foundation for many more victories.

Yet in the nation's capital, it was his leadership of the Redskins that won him so many fans.

"We developed a real friendship," former Redskins coach Joe Gibbs said yesterday. "He was a great sportsman for the sport. He always voted for what was best for the league. He fought blood and guts for the Redskins. He was a guy who started out in life and earned everything himself. The thing I remember about him the most is that he was always at his best when things were at their worst."

Gibbs remembered when his career began in 1981 with five straight losses. On the day after the fifth loss, he was summoned to Cooke's house and guessed he was about to be fired.

Instead, Cooke told him: "You're the right man for the job."

"He could have canned me in a minute," Gibbs said. "But he was always encouraging me when things were at their absolute worst. We are all really going to miss him, particularly the people in Washington. The thing I take real heart in is that I wrote him a personal letter three months ago — it was a real personal letter. I told him, 'We had a lot of great conversations and that I was looking forward to having more in heaven. He wrote me a letter back and said, 'You can count on it.' "

When Cooke recently rewarded Turner with a three-year extension, he referred to him as the best coach he'd been around in pro sports. When a reporter telephoned Gibbs to tell him he'd officially been forgotten, Gibbs disagreed.

"Let me tell you, that's the best thing about Mr. Cooke," Gibbs said. "He believes in his people and he has a great ability to focus on what's ahead. A lot of owners would want to let the coach hang on and twist in the wind. Mr. Cooke wanted Norv to know that he believed in him. That's a great thing."

It was former Redskins general manager Bobby Beathard who hired Gibbs, and together Gibbs, Cooke and Beathard gave the Redskins one of the great runs any sports franchise has ever had. Cooke was asked to mediate countless Gibbs-Beathard disputes, and one of the things that pleased him about the relationship of Turner and Casserly is that they never asked him to settle a disagreement.

"He was a great owner," Beathard said. "He was always great to me. He gave us everything we needed to win. If you didn't win for him, you could never use him for an excuse. He made a lot of great memories possible for me — and for Redskin fans."

Former Redskins offensive lineman Mark May remember Cooke as someone who "made me laugh and also frightened me."

"He made me proud to be a man, proud to be a Redskin, just proud to be associated with that organization," May said. "There was a strength and character with Jack Kent Cooke. You could sit back in awe and watch him. I was a lowly kid from Upstate New York and he treated me like a man. You don't forget things like that."

Cooke had long since stopped attending NFL meetings except when he had a particular issue to lobby for. Still, he stayed in touch with several owners, and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was a frequent guest in Cooke's box at RFK Stadium.

Before his health began to fail last fall, Cooke occupied a spacious corner office at Redskin Park. He attended practices regularly and formed his own opinions about both coaches and players. When he died, he had led the Redskins through great days, and in recent years, not so great days.

But Cooke, the eternal optimist, was convinced that the bad times were over. Several times, he predicted 10 victories and a playoff appearance for next season. When he had left, he had given his team perhaps the best practice facility in sports and many believe his new stadium will be the same type of state-of-the-art arena. "I admired his vision and he will always be remembered for his impact on professional sports," said Los Angeles Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley, a friend of Cooke's. "My thoughts are with his family at this time."

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/redskins/longterm/cooke/articles/squire7.htm

A Sometimes Difficult Man Who Never Found It Hard to Love Life

By Leonard Shapiro

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, April 7, 1997; Page C7

Jack Kent Cooke was clearly among the most astute and shrewdly successful owners of any American professional sports franchise. The man who owned the Washington Redskins from 1974 until his death yesterday at 84 also may have been the most contentiously difficult interview in the history of sports.

I found that out the first time I spoke to him almost 20 years ago, when he was technically the majority owner of the team, but was unable to run the franchise on a day-to-day basis because of the NFL's rules on cross ownership. At the time, he also owned and operated the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers and NHL's Kings, and could not exercise full control of the Redskins until he sold the two Los Angeles teams a few years later.

The year was 1978, and George Allen essentially had been fired by Cooke's Redskins' surrogate, team president and part-owner Edward Bennett Williams, the distinguished Washington attorney. Allen had subsequently been hired to coach the Los Angeles Rams, and I was working on a Post magazine story trying to determine the final plays in Allen's controversial departure.

I had a telephone number for Cooke in Las Vegas, where he was then living in a hotel (like Howard Hughes before him, he had a whole floor to himself) and operating his vast business empire from Nevada while also going through a messy divorce from his first wife, Jeannie, in California.

Allen always had said Cooke had been one of his biggest fans and a longtime benefactor, and I wanted to talk to Cooke about his take on Allen's departure. When the phone rang, none other than Jack Kent Cooke picked it up. I was somewhat startled, expecting a secretary or an administrative aide to be screening his calls. After a brief and slightly stammered introduction I explained what kind of story I was doing, and Cooke cut to the chase. What would you like to know, young man?

He answered my questions for about 10 minutes, providing no great revelations and occasionally correcting the wording of one of my questions. He was a student of the language, he explained that day. And then, quite abruptly, he asked me to repeat back to him, word for word, everything he'd just told me. When I politely declined, explaining that was a violation of Post and personal policy, he exploded.

"Young man," he began, "I want you to know that if if there is one 'i' left undotted, one 't' left uncrossed, one jot or tittle out of place, I'll have your job. Do you understand?"

I had never before or since heard anyone use "jot or tittle" in a conversation, but then again, Jack Kent Cooke was unlike anyone I have ever encountered in 30 years as a journalist. This was a self-made man, a bold thinker and brilliant businessman who could be equal parts charm, culture and charisma while displaying a streak of crude and occasionally cruel incivility, arrogant bluster and unforgiving vindictiveness.

He was a man who wrote music, read extensively and even composed love poems to the four women he courted and eventually married. He once told the late Mo Siegel, his on-again, off-again sportswriter pal and frequent lunch and dinner companion, he had no intention of ever dying, and that he didn't like to go to funerals because it reminded him of his own mortality. Though they had patched up their relationship, he was true to his word when Siegel died two years ago: a no-show at the funeral.

Since our first conversation so many years ago, I interviewed Cooke many more times, and it was never easy.

In 1991, the issue of the team's name "Redskins" continued to be debated around the country. Many Native American groups were strongly opposed to the use of a team name they considered derogatory and deeply offensive. One had even sued the federal government to have the team's trademark revoked for those very reasons.

I was assigned a story on the controversy, and called Cooke for an interview. Come over to the house, he said, and we'll talk. Mostly, however, he talked, insisting from the start that it was to be all off the record, or I could leave. I protested, as I always did, and he refused to reconsider, as he always did.

At one point, I asked him if he'd looked up "Redskins" in the dictionary and seen Webster's first entry after the word. It read "der." as in derogatory. "I don't use Webster," he countered, "I use the Oxford Dictionary, and my dear boy, it says no such thing."

Let me ask you another question, I went on. Had he ever asked New York Times columnist William Safire, his friend and the author of a Sunday column on language in the Times magazine, how he felt about the team being called the Redskins?

"That's a good question," he said, then barked to a secretary in the next room, "get me Willie Safire on the phone, would you dear?"

A few second later, his office telephone rang.

"Hello Willie, how are you? Listen, I've got a reporter in here wanting to know what you think about this Redskins business."

A few seconds passed as Cooke listened. As the conversation continued, he clearly was not happy with what he was hearing, and eventually, he slammed down the telephone.

"So what did he say, Jack?" I asked.

In short, Cooke insisted that Safire, a Redskins fan himself, personally had no problems with the name, but "as an old PR man," he advised Cooke it might not be such a terrible idea to change it to something less offensive. That's when Cooke's conversation with "Willie" had ended.

"Let me tell you something, my dear boy," he said from behind his desk before I was shown the door. "As long as I own this football team and long after I'm gone, they will always be the Washington Redskins."

There have been other conversations, and the occasional confrontation, as well. Our last conversation was personal. I happen to live about three miles from Cooke's Middleburg, Va., estate. My 9-year-old son Taylor and his 8-year-old daughter Jacqueline go to the same school and are a grade apart. One day, Cooke called the house looking for my wife, Vicky, whom he's known since she started a newspaper in Middleburg 15 years ago. She wasn't home, I said. Was there something I could help him with?

Jack Kent Cooke was looking for a piano teacher for his daughter. She'd shown some interest, he said, reminding me that he'd been an accomplished clarinetist in his day, as well. I gave him the name of my son's teacher and the telephone number, but not before one of the world's most fabulously wealthy men had one last question.

"How much does it cost?" he asked.

"To be honest with you, Jack, I have no idea," I said. "Well, you should," said the man who owned the Washington Redskins. "Thanks for the information."

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/redskins/longterm/cooke/articles/farm7.htm

Horses Were Other Passion, Business

By Vinnie Perrone

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, April 7, 1997; Page C6

An avid rider of horses at his Far Acres farm in Middleburg, Jack Kent Cooke became a thoroughbred horseman of national scope with his November 1984 purchase of historic Elmendorf Farm in the heart of Kentucky's bluegrass.

Cooke paid Maxwell H. Gluck $45 million for the 503-acre farm near Lexington and got 2 residences, 9 barns and 327 horses. Implicit in Cooke's purchase was the allure of the Super Bowl of thoroughbred racing: the Kentucky Derby.

That proved a distant vision. In the 12 years past, Flying Continental was the only horse that bore Cooke's gold and blue racing silks through the Derby. He finished 12th in 1989.

Flying Continental did produce major victories on each coast the following year, winning the Charles H. Strub Stakes at Santa Anita Park in Southern California and the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park in New York. Cooke later called Flying Continental the finest colt he raced, better even than 1985 Swaps Stakes winner Padua.

His best filly, Antespend, rose to prominence in 1996 by winning the Santa Anita Oaks and two other prestigious races in California. Now a 4-year-old with earnings of about $1 million, Antespend is to be sold April 16 at a Keeneland auction, with the balance of Cooke's thoroughbreds to follow.

In January, Cooke announced plans to sell Elmendorf, valued at $7.5 million, and separately to disperse his 140 remaining thoroughbreds. He then sold all his broodmares to Kentucky breeder Robert McNair and made arrangements to auction the rest. Told yesterday of Cooke's death, Keeneland sales officials said his holdings should be auctioned as scheduled.

Cooke had said he lost interest in Elmendorf — which has yet to be sold — after the September 1995 death of son Ralph, who had managed the 115-year-old farm.

Cooke had become peripherally involved with the Maryland racing circuit early in 1994, announcing plans to build his Redskins a stadium at Laurel Park racetrack. Ultimately thwarted by zoning and logistical entanglements, Cooke loaned track president Joe De Francis the money necessary for De Francis to buy out embittered partners Bob and Tom Manfuso. With that, De Francis gained control of Laurel and its sister track, Pimlico Race Course.

De Francis, who had watched a number of Redskins games in recent years from Cooke's owner's box at RFK Stadium, said he's "deeply saddened" by Cooke's death and disappointed that Cooke never saw the new stadium completed. "He was a truly remarkable man," De Francis said. "I suppose he had more confidence ... than anyone I've ever known. The man thought he could part the Red Sea, and having watched him work the past three or four years, I had come to believe it."

[angel2]

10 years now in our thoughts and memories...

RIP Jack Kent Cooke

1912-1997

I still wonder why Mr. Cook didn't give his son, John, a chance to control his franchise. And why did the NFL let the price of this club rise to the heavens.

The latter was a conspiracy by the other owners.

[RFKFedEx]

I thought that posting full text in a thread as opposed to just a link was discouraged. But apparently it isn't.

I found this bit of JKC's Wicki bio to be effin HILARIOUS.

Cooke was married five times; two of those marriages were to his final wife. His first marriage, to Barbara Jean Carnegie in Toronto in 1934, ended in 1979 in what was at the time the largest divorce settlement in history—$42 million. The presiding judge was Joseph Wapner, who later came to fame as the judge on The People's Court.

His second marriage, to Jeanne Maxwell, lasted 10 months. Cooke's third wife, Suzanne Elizabeth Martin, claimed that their 1987 marriage was contingent upon her getting an abortion of a fetus Cooke had conceived. At the time, Cooke was 74 and his wife was 31. She had the baby, whom she named Jacqueline Kent Cooke, and the marriage was dissolved after 73 days. She sued Cooke for $15 million.[4]

Following his death, it was revealed that his final wife, Marlene Ramallo Chalmers—a former drug runner from Bolivia who was 40 years his junior—had been cut out of his will.[5] They had married in 1990, divorced in 1993, and remarried in 1995. She filed suit against the estate and reportedly received $20 million in a settlement reached about a year after Cooke's death.

The bulk of Cooke's $825 million estate went into establishing the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation to help struggling people achieve the same success that he enjoyed. The stated mission of the foundation is to "help young people of exceptional promise reach their full potential through education."

The other terms of his will reveal multiple changes of heart regarding his wives and children, and received considerable public attention at the time of his death.

[REEGSKINS]

i was very lucky to have met him and his beautiful wife taking a ride with them down the escalator in giants stadium a couple of years before he died. the security didnt want me to go near him and he told them to let me through, that i was a redskin. that was awesome. and we talked about the team and him and his wife were gushing over the fact that he was gonna give the redskins fans a new stadium in two years. we miss your Jack-R.I.P.

[SkinsDukes]

I still wonder why Mr. Cook didn't give his son, John, a chance to control his franchise. And why did the NFL let the price of this club rise to the heavens.

The latter was a conspiracy by the other owners.

What? The other owners didn't make money off the sale. Unless you're referencing the back room bargaining to keep Milstein from buying the club, which might I add I'm grateful for...Snyder has faults, but Milstein would have destroyed this club by now.