Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
‘Bill’ Cook, PR executive
and journalist,
dies at 71OBITUARIES
By Harold Morse
Star-BulletinSidney William "Bill" Cook, isle newspaperman, government official and public-relations man who fell in love with Hawaii after his 1963 arrival here, died yesterday at North Hawaii Community Hospital at Waimea, Hawaii. He was 71.
Born in Jennings, La., he earned a journalism degree from McNeese State College at Lake Charles, La., in 1956 -- following four years of Navy service and earlier study at smaller schools.
Cook was a government and planning writer for the Honolulu Advertiser from 1963 to 1968.
He then joined Milici Advertising Agency as vice president of public relations. He left that position in 1969 and became special assistant on housing and urban affairs for Gov. John A. Burns.
He left government in 1972, initially working for and then buying Communications Pacific. He built it into the largest public-relations firm in Hawaii.
He retired to Waimea in 1985 but soon became executive director for the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce. Then in 1988 he was wooed back to Oahu to work for Gov. John Waihee in the Department of Business and Economic Development. He remained in that position until 1991.
Again retiring to Waimea, he soon became the executive director for Hawaii Island Geothermal Alliance. In 1993, he and his wife, Patti, opened Cook's Discoveries in Waimea. "He lived in Hawaii longer than anywhere else" and was deeply committed to creating new jobs in Hawaii and making it a better place, Patti Cook said.
A literacy advocate, Cook helped start a program to encourage adults to read to children at Waimea Elementary and Intermediate School.
He also is survived by sons William, Douglas, Kevin, D'Armand and Gregory and two granddaughters.
Services will be at 4 p.m. Thursday at Waimea's St. James Episcopal Church. Donations may be made to Friends of Thelma Parker Memorial Library in Waimea. Another contribution could be friends reading to children in their neighborhood schools, Patti Cook said.
