Background
Robert Johnson Cook was born on March 21, 1849 near Cookstown, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of John Bell and Matilda (Cunningham) Cook, both of Scotch-Irish ancestry and descendants of pioneers of Western Pennsylvania.
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Robert Johnson Cook
Edit ProfileEducation
When he was twenty years of age, inspired and encouraged by his mother, he quit his father’s prosperous farm and enrolled at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. He entered Yale with the class of 1875, but had to drop back to the class of 1876, with which he graduated. After graduation, he read law in Greensburgh, Pennsylvania, and in Pittsburgh and was admitted to the Allegheny County bar in 1879.
Career
After two years in law, and a year abroad Cook became business manager of the Philadelphia Press, a position which he held until 1897, during that time changing a bankrupt paper to one of the most prosperous journals in the country.
In the spring of his freshman year at Yale, Cook wandered down to the boat-house, and asked for a chance to row. The Yale boat club in those days was an exclusive organization, in spite of the fact that the crew was being defeated regularly. Cook’s request was curtly refused and he was told to keep away. His fighting spirit was roused and day after day he haunted the club. He had already established himself as the best wrestler and boxer in college and no one seemed eager for the job of throwing him out. Finally the captain turned to diplomacy and put Cook in a pair-oar with the strongest and best oar in Yale, hoping in this way to discourage him.
In less than a quarter of an hour, Cook, who had never before had his hands on an oar, was pulling the veteran around in a circle. Two weeks later, he was in the varsity boat. That year Yale was again defeated and Cook was elected captain for 1873. All summer and all fall he brooded over the defeat. College rowing in America was then in a very crude state and what little style it possessed had been acquired from professional scullers. The sliding seat was a novelty and most of the crews were still sliding on boards greased with tallow.
It was not until the Christmas vacation when Cook, too poor to afford the expense of the trip home, sat in his room reading Tom Brown at Oxford that he had an inspiration which still guides American college rowing. He resolved to go to England, somehow, to study English rowing, interviewed President Porter, and won the reserved and scholarly old president’s consent. The boat club did not have a dollar in its treasury with which to finance the expedition, but Cook and the same undergraduates who six months before had shut the door of the boat-house in his face, pawned their watches and overcoats and sold their spare furniture, and within a week he was on his way to England.
The square-jawed, broad-shouldered young American was cordially received at Cambridge, at Oxford, and by the London Rowing Club. For six weeks he rowed every day and spent the evenings with the coaches. He decided that he would have to modify the orthodox English stroke to fit American boys, that they would not be able to master the exaggerated body swing without a waste of effort and exhaustion. He therefore shortened it and counter-balanced this by emphasizing the form in-board and the finish of the stroke. He returned to New Haven and produced a victorious crew in June.
The same year he won the single scull race. He was captain and stroke for four years. From 1876 to 1897, Cook coached thirteen Yale eights, twelve of which were victorious over Harvard. Including the crews he coached as an undergraduate, he won fourteen out of seventeen races against Harvard; two of these races were triangular events in which Cook’s crews were defeated by Cornell eights coached by Charles E. Courtney.
In 1896 when Yale and Harvard broke off athletic relations, Cook took the Yale crew to Henley. The Leander Boat Club, composed of former Oxford and Cambridge “Blues, ” called from as far as South Africa their best oars. Yale was beaten by a fraction of a boat length. The experience convinced Cook that he had refined his stroke too much and on his return he attempted to follow the English stroke more closely. About the same time new policies in his business led to his retirement.
He took the change philosophically and became a traveler, spending much of his time in Paris but returning to the house at Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania, built by his great-grandfather Colonel Edward Cook more than one hundred and fifty years before, to spend his last days.
Achievements
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Cook was well known as a great teacher of rowing. Industrious, courageous, and honest, he left with hundreds of boys who came under his teaching, an imprint of sturdy character which they carried through life. Many offers of generous remuneration from other colleges came to him during the years of his success, but he scorned them and gave to Yale, with no thought of reward, his time and his services for twenty-seven years.
Connections
Cook was married on April 26, 1881, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, United States to Annie Glyde Wells, daughter of Calvin Wells, owner of the Philadelphia Press. They had three daughters but were divorced in 1897.
