PERSPECTIVE: John Cooke exemplified a Virginia gentleman

» Former speaker of the House earned respect, on both sides of the aisle, with dignity and grace.

If it is tempting to say he came from central casting, then doing so would be an injustice. For him, rectitude and good manners were neither act nor pose but obligation and essence. They defined his being. For many years he represented the Middle Peninsula in the House of Delegates, and his name was John Warren Cooke.

Cooke personified a Virginia ideal honored more frequently in flowery rhetoric than in practice. He was a gentleman. As speaker of the House, he presided over a chamber in transition. A Democratic stalwart, he saw Virginia change from a one-party state controlled by the so-called Byrd Organization to a state with vigorous two-party competition. When Cooke entered the House during the 1940s, Republicans did not rate recognition as an endangered species for the simple reason they did not qualify as a species. They caucused in a phone booth, as the joke put it.

Although Republicans formed but a rump during much of Cooke's tenure, he treated them with fairness. He probably got along better with many of them than with the more rambunctious members of his own party. Cooke was moderate in politics and in temperament — a quality that suggests strength of character. Republicans occupied the Executive Mansion during his latter years; Cooke also contended with Young Turks among Democrats eager to escape the cage.

Throughout it all he retained almost universal respect. We never heard a bad word about him.

Name a civic group in his beloved neck of the woods, and Cooke likely participated with it. He was a newspaper publisher by trade or vocation, and was one of the few who could claim a Jeffersonian inheritance. His love of Virginia, of the Chesapeake in particular, had deep roots. His father, an Episcopal parson, served with Gen. Lee.

John Warren Cooke died Saturday at 94, in Mathews, his home and the family seat, and if something goes with him then that is a cause less for lament than for gratitude. Wherefore his heart is glad, and his spirit rejoiceth; his flesh also shall rest in hope — of this we are confident.

Richmond Times-Dispatch