J. WILLIAM 'BILL' COOK /
ISLE MUSIC PHILANTHROPIST

Longtime isle vacationer
left a load of Hawaiian tunes

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By Mary Vorsino
mvorsino@starbulletin.com

J. William "Bill" Cook loved Hawaiian music.

In his 30-year connection to the islands, he amassed a collection of more than 6,000 Hawaiian music recordings on everything from Thomas Alva Edison cylinders to LPs and CDs. And he listened to them all the time, said his daughter Janice Arai, 56, of Seattle.

Cook, 89, a resident of Virginia who owned a condominium on Oahu and spent his winters here, died May 15 of Alzheimer's Disease at Washington, D.C.'s Inova Fairfax Hospital. He was a former director of the Division of Pesticide, Chemistry and Toxicology at the Food and Drug Administration.

"He wanted to play ukulele in college, but he never did," Arai said. "(But) from the time that he and my mother first came to Hawaii, he fell in love with Hawaiian music."

Cook, a chemist, began working for the FDA as a food inspector in 1940 and "worked his way up," said his daughter Charlotte LaRoy of Midlothian, Va. He retired in 1972.

In 1990, Cook donated more than 1,200 of his Hawaiian music recordings to the University of Hawaii-Manoa's Hamilton Library music collection.

Cook's other passion, and what drew him to Hawaii, was travel, Arai said.

In the late 1960s, Cook got unheard-of permission to travel to Cuba with his first wife, Chloe Cook, to oversee a health program there. The two also visited Cambodia during a brief lull in the Vietnam War.

But it was Hawaii, not any of the usual retirement states, Arai said, that calmed his wife's acute arthritis and gave Cook his favorite haunts: the island's botanical gardens, Aloha Stadium's flea market and Columbia Inn.

"He was very much what I consider the aloha spirit. (He would) do different things that were not on your tourist map."

Cook was born in Erie, Colo. He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Oregon State University and a master's degree in chemistry from Washington State University.

For his research with the FDA, Cook received the Department of Health, Education and Welfare Distinguished Service Award.

His ashes will be scattered in waters off Honolulu in July, as his first wife's ashes were. Chloe Cook, to whom he was married for 42 years, died in 1979. His second wife, of 18 years, Margaret Cook, died in 2001.

Cook is survived by his four children, three stepchildren, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Alzheimer's Association or the Hospice of Northern Virginia. A private memorial was held late last month.