Eulogy - Grandpa Cook

Barney Cook, my grandpa on my mother's side (not-related directly,) passed away this morning, from natural causes. He served the armed forces in WW II, and he was a good man. He loved to sing, "I scream for ice cream," or its reverse meaning since he was a mathematician, when the time was right, and many other songs... When we were younger, he told us stories about his boy-scout years, but now I wish I asked more; the one story that I heard more than once was the day he couldn't solve a difficult calculus problem, in college, and then the night after he woke up--he had solved the problem in his sleep. He was a straight A student who went to the prestigious University of Chicago, and I think he was the top of his class. When I visited their Clear Lake cabin, he would give me math problems, and I would always learn something new, and he happily would answer my questions since math was his cup of tea. He had many great tastes in music--dixie chicks, Chopin, Mozart, Bach, but mostly whatever Grandma Laura liked. In my few years at Florida State University (he lived in Tallahassee,) he was exceptionally generous and he and Grandma Cook took care of me, helping me find work at various commercial locations. He loved my grandmother, his sisters, his kids, and us; but that was because he was an intelligent man; he was a nuclear physicist who invested in the Dogs of the Dow Jones Industrials, and in his last few years of his life, after his stroke, he liked to watch the news as much as possible, on T.V. He never liked the change of direction for this country and Trump. I visited my grandparents, often, and he not once became angry at me. I am almost certain that is what sucked the last mental energy from him, but he was 94. :(