William Cook (entrepreneur) - Biography

Biography

Cook was born in Mattoon, Illinois, and he grew up and graduated from high school in Canton, Illinois where he was a letterman in football, basketball, and track. He majored in biology at Northwestern University where he joined Beta Theta Pi fraternity and graduated in 1953. He had planned to go on to medical school, but was drafted into the army, where he served his two year stint as a surgical technician. Bill married Gayle Karch in 1957, and they had a son (now an executive within the Cook Group), Carl, in 1962. In 1963, the Cook family moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where they started the company that was eventually to become the Cook Group from their apartment. For his many contributions to society, Cook was honored with honorary degrees from Northwestern University, Indiana University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Marian College (now Marian University), and Vincennes University.

Read more about this topic:  William Cook (entrepreneur)

Famous quotes containing the word biography:

    A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.
    Richard Holmes (b. 1945)

    In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.
    James Boswell (1740–95)