(I ran across Dad’s tribute to Kathy a while back and wanted to repeat it, and since Bill Whitmire didn’t have a column this week I thought I’d take this opportunity. KWC)
We are blown away. By we, I mean the Cooke and Martin families. The support from this great community has been overwhelming—and sustaining—since Kathy’s untimely death Feb. 8.
I have been asked to share a eulogy that I wrote for her celebration of life service Saturday. I honor this request because it came from my wife! So please bear with a proud papa for a few paragraphs: Wasn’t Kathy a HOOT!? What a smile! What a laugh! What an endearing personality! Caring, giving, loving.
This celebration of life is planned to be just that. Kathy would want no long faces at this gathering.
That exuberant, outgoing personality was evident right from the start. On her third night home after her birth, she slept from 11 p.m. until 7 a.m.—eight hours—and did so every night thereafter without a feeding.
Peg and I thought, “Hey, if it’s this easy let’s have four of them!” And we did. Three sons followed Kathy, amounting to three reality checks! Kathy’s brothers ate every two hours 24/7.
Kathy was a cheerleader in high school, and we all know that was perfect casting. As a junior in high school, those cheerleaders worked their magic in playoff games at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field, Baylor Stadium in Waco, UT’s Memorial Stadium in Austin, and finally at Texas Stadium in Irving, then home of the Dallas Cowboys—when the 1976 Tigers won the state championship.
And if you read Kathy’s column each we ek in The Reporter you know she continued cheerleading for Rockdale, for its fund-raising benefits for those in need, for its civic and social organizations and all of their projects, for the Chamber and the Downtown Association, and the list goes on and on.
She was a “people person publisher,” just what any community needs.
Her newspaper career was a case of someone going “full circle.” She sold advertising for The Reporter in the summers while she was in high school. She attended Sam Houston State for a year and a half, worked as a payroll clerk for an oil company, then attended North Texas State (now UNT) for a semester before going to work for a Dallas hospital and living with her mother’s sister, Judy Hopper.
Her Aunt Judy was a hairdresser at the time. Kathy took a shine to that, graduated from a hair design school in College Station, and for 17 years she worked in salons in Rockdale.
There are women all over town who still tell the family how much fun they had when Kathy, and her close friend Bonnie Raymond, cut their hair.
The “full circle” came in 2000 when she joined the family business, The Reporter, in advertising sales. She progressed to advertising manager and then, in 2010, to publisher. Another challenge well met with that beaming smile.
Kathy’s writing skills were evident at an early age. A high school English teacher, Tom Underwood, recognized this and encouraged her to keep a journal, which she did. One example of that young talent is the following which Peg found among a lot of mementos. I hold it dear, although I think she may have written it after she and I had a “row.” You will enjoy.
To Daddy
I am so like you.
You shine through me. I am a perfectionist to some extent. I want to be the very best and nothing else.
So do you. Impatiently? I call it a zest for new and unfound things. I want as much as is possible out of life.
So do you. Temper? Yes and it is sometimes quick to escape. I have been called a “spitfire” and would have it no other way. So many things never get said so I say them.
So do you! Do not condemn yourself. You are also condemning those who are a part of you.
Do not wish yourself to change.
Others cannot begin to accept you if you cannot first accept yourself.
I accept you, And I love you.
—Kathy (age 16)
—bc— Dang, it’s hard to be a disciplinarian when you’re wrapped around someone’s finger.
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