Ken Cook

I started college at the Univ. of Maine in the fall of 1968. While home in the summer of 1969, I visited my HS girlfriend, Julia Friend, at Radford College in VA. I was with her when Apollo 11 first landed on the moon.

I started dating Barbara Henderson, FHHS '70, in 1970 and took her to her senior prom. I transferred colleges in 1972 to be w/ Barb. I graduated Fla State Univ in 1973 and joined the Air Force. Barb helped pin on my 2nd Lt bars in 1974. We separated in 1975 but stay in contact to this day.

My pilot-training class had been eliminated due to the fuel crisis of 1973, so I was waiting for a new class assignment when I applied for law school in 1975. Orders for pilot-training and my acceptance to law school both arrived by the end of 1975 . . . and both started on the same day in Jan 1976! I opted for law school.

I graduated from Stetson Law School in St. Petersburg, FL, in Dec '78 and moved to Colo Spgs, CO. I was a law clerk for 2 years and started practicing law in 1981. I became a partner in a 10-man law firm and practiced general civil law in Colo Spgs until 1991.

In 1980 I was trained as a mediator. During my entire law practice, I volunteered as a mediator at night and on weekends. When I left the law firm in 1991, I became a contract mediator for the state of Colorado, a position I held until 1995 when I was hired as a mediator by the U.S. Justice Department. That position ended in 1998 when I transferred to the Social Security Administration to allow my wife to become the Acting U.S. Attorney for Colorado.

I met Linda McMahan, Attorney/Capt., U.S. Army, in 1981 when she came into our courtroom while I was clerking for the Chief Dist. Ct. judge. I asked her out, but she refused. Exactly one year later, to the week, we briefly met again. I again asked her out, but for 3 months she again refused. Finally, in Jan 1983, we started dating. Six months later the Army transferred her away . . . to Ft. Belvoir, VA! The same Ft. Belvoir where I had dated all through high school and college summers (my Dad was military), gone to the theater and officer's club, and worked at the commissary and gas station. I showed Linda around her new post and helped her buy a townhouse in Springfield and we got engaged.

We married in May of 1984. Linda left the Army and returned to Colo where I had made partner in my law firm. Linda was a prosecutor for the state for 7 years when she was hired by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver in 1991, the same year I left my firm. We therefore moved to Littleton (12 miles south of Denver) in 1995. In 1998 Linda was named Acting U.S. Attorney for Colorado (which is why I had to leave the office).

Several months later the shootings at Columbine HS occurred (Columbine HS is 1.5 miles from our home) and Congress approved a new U.S. Attorney for Colorado. Linda then went back to being a line prosecutor in the office.

In 1999, after working at the Social Security office for 1.5 years, I left to return to college full time. My original reason for joining the Air Force had been to try to become an astronaut. When I had to choose between pilot training and law school in 1975, I decided being an astronaut was a pipe dream and I should try something more practical. Hence, law school.

Although I practiced law for 10 years, I was never fully satisfied. Mediation made me feel more a part of the solution, rather than the problem, but, when that position ended in 1998, I felt adrift. Linda suggested I follow my dream and return to college for an engineering degree (as the only way to becoming an astronaut, since I had not gone to pilot training).

Thus, at 49 years old, I returned to college full time, taking calculus, physics, and chemistry at my local community college for a year. I was then accepted into aerospace engineering at the Univ of Colo in Boulder, the #4 school in the country for producing astronauts (15 graduates have flown in space). I spent 1.5 years there full-time, living in a basement apartment and coming home on weekends. School days were 16 hours (8 am to midnight), with labs and a tutor. In my junior year they bumped the math up one more level and my poor brain reached its limit. I left school at the end of 2001 with no degree, but much richer for the experience.

I then started working as the in-house counsel for a small business and eventually became manager of the store. That business was Caboose Hobbies, "The World's Largest Model Train Store" as certified by the Guinness Book of World's Records in 2014. When the store owners retired in 2016 and sold the store, I, too, retired. Linda retired 9 months before me.

My first order of business after retirement was to complete a new train layout I designed 30 years ago and started 20 years ago. It took 2.5 years of concentrated effort, but I finished the project in July 2019. The story and photographs of that layout will soon be published in "Classic Toy Trains" magazine in the summer or fall of this year, 2020.

I'm now involved with several model train groups and Linda plays tennis. We both enjoy reading and spend our extra time traveling, including bicycle tours. We have taken 5 such trips to date (4 in Europe) and in 2014 did a 2-week bicycle tour of New Zealand (where I made a bungee jump).
Between 2016 and 2019 we traveled to China, Japan, and Australia.

If you are every in Denver, please call and come visit.

Remember the movie "Remember the Titans"? As I watched the movie, I expected to see "Titans vs Ft. Hunt" flash on the screen. It was 1967 and I was the quarterback for that game. We played to a 0-0 tie in the rain. It seems my play was the only one working that night . . . QB-keeper around the end . . . time and time again.

A photographer was there for the Gazette and he had an automatic-advance camera. He took lots of sequential shots of Don Oliver leading me around the end. In one memorable shot, he caught me in the classic Heisman Trophy pose stiff-arming the Titan left defensive end, #87.

Flash forward 10 years. College is over, I've been in and out of the Air Force, and I'm now in law school in Fla. One late night as I was leaving the library, I started a conversation w/ a fellow student. Where are you from; where did you go to college; high school? He went to high school in VA. Where? T.C. Williams. When did you graduate? 1968. Did you play football? Yes. What position? Left defensive end. What was your number? #87!

The next day I showed him the picture. Amazing. Eerie.

Although I have a sister who lives just north of Georgetown, and both parents are buried in Arlington National Cemetery, I don't get back to visit Alexandria very often.

After we threw ourselves a group 60th birthday party in 2010 in Ft. Meyers, I started a 3-yr online conversation w/ Tammy Hill Harless and Bonnie Craigmile England about religion. After that, Tammy and I have stayed in fairly constant contact.

I collect old Lionel trains and had a layout all through high school. I still have a home layout and 7 of us take a 40 ft x 12 ft modular layout to shows in the area. I'm the scenery and weathering guy.

Memories: Football, Hot Shoppes, Julia Friend.

Embarrassing moment: Getting caught at 4 am sneaking back home after a clandestine rendezvous w/ Julia.

Funny caper: While running for office, I snuck up on the roof of the school and suspended a sign that read "Look to Cook" across the second story inner courtyard.

I would try to make more friends, ie, reach out to others.