From Shipmate, the U. S. Naval Academy Alumni magazine:
Cooke, Charles Maynard
DOB 10/19/1931 ~DOD 12/14/2008 HI
CHARLES MAYNARD COOKE (Age 77) A retired military officer who spent his life in public service, died at home in Sonoma, California on December 14, 2008 of complications from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and pulmonary fibrosis. Mr. Cooke was born in Honolulu, HI and attended high school in California and Tsingtao, China. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1953. He was among the quarter of the Naval Academy graduating class that year commissioned in the US Air Force. He received his MA in history from the University of Washington, with a focus on Chinese history and language. In 1961, Mr. Cooke accepted a position at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO, becoming an associate professor of history, teaching one of the first inter-disciplinary courses on Communist revolutionary warfare and starting the first Chinese language course at a US service academy. Mr. Cooke went to Saigon in 1966 with the Pacification Planning Group where he assisted in writing, in conjunction with the Vietnamese General Staff, the first joint pacification plan for Vietnam. Following his return from Vietnam, he served in the East Asia division of the Office of the Secretary of Defense where he analyzed political and military affairs on Vietnam for the Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs (ISA). Toward the end of his duty at the Pentagon, he was one of the authors of the Pentagon Papers which chronicled the evolution of U.S. policy in Indochina. Mr. Cooke then served as Special Advisor on Vietnam to Under Secretary of State Elliot Richardson. He was instrumental in developing teams to go to Vietnam to assess the situation on the ground. Subsequently he accompanied Richardson to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and headed a new Office of Special Concerns where he worked to foster equality of educational opportunity. Mr. Cooke later became HEW;s deputy assistant secretary for education legislation. Mr. Cooke then served as a policy advisor on federal education programs and legislation for Wilson Riles, California's State Superintendent of Public Instruction. His legislative work at the federal and state level made significant contributions to enactment of provisions for distributing funds to priority education needs. Through activities associated with a highly regarded zinfandel vineyard he planted in 1980, Mr. Cooke became involved in Sonoma County civic issues, spearheading the campaign to establish the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District. He was appointed to the Sonoma County Planning Commission in 1991 and remained a leader on Sonoma County land use issues for nearly 20 years. He is survived by his wife of 30 years, Sara Peterson; his sisters Maynard Cooke Horiuchi and Elizabeth Field; his daughters Meg Cooke and Stephanie Cooke; his sister-in-law Susan Peterson (Raymond St. Francis); and his nephews Adrian and Theo St. Francis. No services are scheduled at this time. Remembrances in in Mr. Cooke's name may be made to the Interstitial Lung Disease Program at Stanford University, Gift Processing, 326 Galvez Street, Stanford, CA 94305-6105.
More on Charlie from a local news item:
Open space powerhouse dies
Longtime county planner 'leaves extraordinary legacy'
By CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 4:23 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 5:22 a.m.
Sonoma County open-space pioneer Charlie Cooke, a crusty ex-military man who advised two White House administrations and considered it a badge of honor to have earned a death threat from Richard M. Nixon, died Sunday at age 77.
"He died at home, and he died just as the sun was coming up Sunday morning," said his wife of 30 years, Sara Peterson. "He was always looking to the west, to the future."
Her husband, for decades a powerhouse on the Sonoma County Planning Commission and father of the county's unique effort to purchase and perpetually preserve vast tracts of land through its Open Space District, was weakened by a long fight with lymphoma and pulmonary fibrosis.
One of Cooke's proudest days came just two months ago when he agreed to convey to Sonoma County a conservation easement on his historic, 193-acre ranch off of Sonoma Valley's Lovall Road. His parents, personal friends of Jack London and his wife, Charmian, bought the ranch as a retirement home in 1938.
Cooke, a fixture at the county government center in Santa Rosa, had hoped to be present for the supervisors' mid-October discussion of the open-space transaction, but that day he had yet another doctor's appointment at Stanford.
"I wanted to be there to explain that the county is getting a beautiful piece of property that has historical significance," he said afterward. He told The Press Democrat he especially loved the ranch's lofty views of San Francisco and Mount Tamalpais.
"I thought it should be protected, and it should stay as it is," Cooke said. "So I went ahead and did it."
The retired Air Force major and son of a famed Navy admiral came home to his family's ranch in 1985 after two intense and influential decades of service in the Pentagon and as a White House adviser.
He voted Republican in those days, though more recently he signed on early as a backer of Barack Obama. When Nixon became president in 1969, he went to work for Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson.
As a specialist on Vietnam, Cooke took part in the writing of the Pentagon Papers -- a collection of top-secret memos detailing the history of the war. When those papers were slipped to the New York Times in 1971, Nixon reportedly misidentified Cooke as the source of the leak.
"This Cooke," Nixon said during a taped conversation with National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman . . . "I want him killed . . . Why does Elliot sit there and defend the son of a bitch?"
Cooke returned to California after Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated President Gerald Ford in 1976. He worked several years for Wilson Riles, the state's Superintendent of Schools, and then came home to the family ranch in Sonoma.
He became deeply involved in county land-use issues: gravel mining, efforts to introduce commuter rail, regulations on vineyard development, farmland protection.
He became known as "Commissioner Curmudgeon" through the course of a long, fiercely opinionated and independent run on the Sonoma County Planning Commission. Admirers say his greatest contribution to the county was his lead role in creating and persuading agriculture leaders to support the taxpayer-financed Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District.
"When you think about all that the district has accomplished, that is an extraordinary legacy -- and that's before considering the dedication of his own land to permanent open space," said Pete Golis, former editorial director of The Press Democrat and someone who relished his talks with Cooke.
Golis continued, "People said he was crusty and curmudgeonly, but I always enjoyed talking to him. He was direct. Sometimes, it would be helpful if more people were willing to spend a little less time dancing around an issue."
Longtime friend Bob Anderson said, "The fact we have an open space district is a result of the work Charlie did."
Anderson is a member the Open Space Authority and chairman of the Regional Water Quality Control Board. He said that in 2031, when the voter-approved quarter-cent sales tax for Sonoma County open space acquisition expires, "Somebody should look back and say, 'He was the guy. He did it.'"
Anderson saw Cooke at his home Friday night. He was very weak and under hospice care, but he and Anderson enjoyed what would be their last talk.
Anderson said everyone who cared about Cooke "should know that at the end he was at peace. He went a rested, proud man."
In addition to his wife, Cooke is survived by his daughters from his first marriage, Meg Cooke of Los Angeles and Stephanie Cooke of Seattle; sisters, Maynard Horiuchi and Elizabeth Field, both of Sonoma; and nephews Adrian and Theo St. Francis, also of Sonoma.
Cooke, Charles Maynard
DOB 10/19/1931 ~DOD 12/14/2008 HI
CHARLES MAYNARD COOKE (Age 77) A retired military officer who spent his life in public service, died at home in Sonoma, California on December 14, 2008 of complications from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and pulmonary fibrosis. Mr. Cooke was born in Honolulu, HI and attended high school in California and Tsingtao, China. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1953. He was among the quarter of the Naval Academy graduating class that year commissioned in the US Air Force. He received his MA in history from the University of Washington, with a focus on Chinese history and language. In 1961, Mr. Cooke accepted a position at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO, becoming an associate professor of history, teaching one of the first inter-disciplinary courses on Communist revolutionary warfare and starting the first Chinese language course at a US service academy. Mr. Cooke went to Saigon in 1966 with the Pacification Planning Group where he assisted in writing, in conjunction with the Vietnamese General Staff, the first joint pacification plan for Vietnam. Following his return from Vietnam, he served in the East Asia division of the Office of the Secretary of Defense where he analyzed political and military affairs on Vietnam for the Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs (ISA). Toward the end of his duty at the Pentagon, he was one of the authors of the Pentagon Papers which chronicled the evolution of U.S. policy in Indochina. Mr. Cooke then served as Special Advisor on Vietnam to Under Secretary of State Elliot Richardson. He was instrumental in developing teams to go to Vietnam to assess the situation on the ground. Subsequently he accompanied Richardson to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and headed a new Office of Special Concerns where he worked to foster equality of educational opportunity. Mr. Cooke later became HEW;s deputy assistant secretary for education legislation. Mr. Cooke then served as a policy advisor on federal education programs and legislation for Wilson Riles, California's State Superintendent of Public Instruction. His legislative work at the federal and state level made significant contributions to enactment of provisions for distributing funds to priority education needs. Through activities associated with a highly regarded zinfandel vineyard he planted in 1980, Mr. Cooke became involved in Sonoma County civic issues, spearheading the campaign to establish the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District. He was appointed to the Sonoma County Planning Commission in 1991 and remained a leader on Sonoma County land use issues for nearly 20 years. He is survived by his wife of 30 years, Sara Peterson; his sisters Maynard Cooke Horiuchi and Elizabeth Field; his daughters Meg Cooke and Stephanie Cooke; his sister-in-law Susan Peterson (Raymond St. Francis); and his nephews Adrian and Theo St. Francis. No services are scheduled at this time. Remembrances in in Mr. Cooke's name may be made to the Interstitial Lung Disease Program at Stanford University, Gift Processing, 326 Galvez Street, Stanford, CA 94305-6105.
More on Charlie from a local news item:
Open space powerhouse dies
Longtime county planner 'leaves extraordinary legacy'
By CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 4:23 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 5:22 a.m.
Sonoma County open-space pioneer Charlie Cooke, a crusty ex-military man who advised two White House administrations and considered it a badge of honor to have earned a death threat from Richard M. Nixon, died Sunday at age 77.
"He died at home, and he died just as the sun was coming up Sunday morning," said his wife of 30 years, Sara Peterson. "He was always looking to the west, to the future."
Her husband, for decades a powerhouse on the Sonoma County Planning Commission and father of the county's unique effort to purchase and perpetually preserve vast tracts of land through its Open Space District, was weakened by a long fight with lymphoma and pulmonary fibrosis.
One of Cooke's proudest days came just two months ago when he agreed to convey to Sonoma County a conservation easement on his historic, 193-acre ranch off of Sonoma Valley's Lovall Road. His parents, personal friends of Jack London and his wife, Charmian, bought the ranch as a retirement home in 1938.
Cooke, a fixture at the county government center in Santa Rosa, had hoped to be present for the supervisors' mid-October discussion of the open-space transaction, but that day he had yet another doctor's appointment at Stanford.
"I wanted to be there to explain that the county is getting a beautiful piece of property that has historical significance," he said afterward. He told The Press Democrat he especially loved the ranch's lofty views of San Francisco and Mount Tamalpais.
"I thought it should be protected, and it should stay as it is," Cooke said. "So I went ahead and did it."
The retired Air Force major and son of a famed Navy admiral came home to his family's ranch in 1985 after two intense and influential decades of service in the Pentagon and as a White House adviser.
He voted Republican in those days, though more recently he signed on early as a backer of Barack Obama. When Nixon became president in 1969, he went to work for Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson.
As a specialist on Vietnam, Cooke took part in the writing of the Pentagon Papers -- a collection of top-secret memos detailing the history of the war. When those papers were slipped to the New York Times in 1971, Nixon reportedly misidentified Cooke as the source of the leak.
"This Cooke," Nixon said during a taped conversation with National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman . . . "I want him killed . . . Why does Elliot sit there and defend the son of a bitch?"
Cooke returned to California after Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated President Gerald Ford in 1976. He worked several years for Wilson Riles, the state's Superintendent of Schools, and then came home to the family ranch in Sonoma.
He became deeply involved in county land-use issues: gravel mining, efforts to introduce commuter rail, regulations on vineyard development, farmland protection.
He became known as "Commissioner Curmudgeon" through the course of a long, fiercely opinionated and independent run on the Sonoma County Planning Commission. Admirers say his greatest contribution to the county was his lead role in creating and persuading agriculture leaders to support the taxpayer-financed Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District.
"When you think about all that the district has accomplished, that is an extraordinary legacy -- and that's before considering the dedication of his own land to permanent open space," said Pete Golis, former editorial director of The Press Democrat and someone who relished his talks with Cooke.
Golis continued, "People said he was crusty and curmudgeonly, but I always enjoyed talking to him. He was direct. Sometimes, it would be helpful if more people were willing to spend a little less time dancing around an issue."
Longtime friend Bob Anderson said, "The fact we have an open space district is a result of the work Charlie did."
Anderson is a member the Open Space Authority and chairman of the Regional Water Quality Control Board. He said that in 2031, when the voter-approved quarter-cent sales tax for Sonoma County open space acquisition expires, "Somebody should look back and say, 'He was the guy. He did it.'"
Anderson saw Cooke at his home Friday night. He was very weak and under hospice care, but he and Anderson enjoyed what would be their last talk.
Anderson said everyone who cared about Cooke "should know that at the end he was at peace. He went a rested, proud man."
In addition to his wife, Cooke is survived by his daughters from his first marriage, Meg Cooke of Los Angeles and Stephanie Cooke of Seattle; sisters, Maynard Horiuchi and Elizabeth Field, both of Sonoma; and nephews Adrian and Theo St. Francis, also of Sonoma.
From Shipmate, the U. S. Naval Academy Alumni magazine:
Cooke, Charles Maynard
DOB 10/19/1931 ~DOD 12/14/2008 HI
CHARLES MAYNARD COOKE (Age 77) A retired military officer who spent his life in public service, died at home in Sonoma, California on December 14, 2008 of complications from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and pulmonary fibrosis. Mr. Cooke was born in Honolulu, HI and attended high school in California and Tsingtao, China. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1953. He was among the quarter of the Naval Academy graduating class that year commissioned in the US Air Force. He received his MA in history from the University of Washington, with a focus on Chinese history and language. In 1961, Mr. Cooke accepted a position at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO, becoming an associate professor of history, teaching one of the first inter-disciplinary courses on Communist revolutionary warfare and starting the first Chinese language course at a US service academy. Mr. Cooke went to Saigon in 1966 with the Pacification Planning Group where he assisted in writing, in conjunction with the Vietnamese General Staff, the first joint pacification plan for Vietnam. Following his return from Vietnam, he served in the East Asia division of the Office of the Secretary of Defense where he analyzed political and military affairs on Vietnam for the Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs (ISA). Toward the end of his duty at the Pentagon, he was one of the authors of the Pentagon Papers which chronicled the evolution of U.S. policy in Indochina. Mr. Cooke then served as Special Advisor on Vietnam to Under Secretary of State Elliot Richardson. He was instrumental in developing teams to go to Vietnam to assess the situation on the ground. Subsequently he accompanied Richardson to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and headed a new Office of Special Concerns where he worked to foster equality of educational opportunity. Mr. Cooke later became HEW;s deputy assistant secretary for education legislation. Mr. Cooke then served as a policy advisor on federal education programs and legislation for Wilson Riles, California's State Superintendent of Public Instruction. His legislative work at the federal and state level made significant contributions to enactment of provisions for distributing funds to priority education needs. Through activities associated with a highly regarded zinfandel vineyard he planted in 1980, Mr. Cooke became involved in Sonoma County civic issues, spearheading the campaign to establish the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District. He was appointed to the Sonoma County Planning Commission in 1991 and remained a leader on Sonoma County land use issues for nearly 20 years. He is survived by his wife of 30 years, Sara Peterson; his sisters Maynard Cooke Horiuchi and Elizabeth Field; his daughters Meg Cooke and Stephanie Cooke; his sister-in-law Susan Peterson (Raymond St. Francis); and his nephews Adrian and Theo St. Francis. No services are scheduled at this time. Remembrances in in Mr. Cooke's name may be made to the Interstitial Lung Disease Program at Stanford University, Gift Processing, 326 Galvez Street, Stanford, CA 94305-6105.
More on Charlie from a local news item:
Open space powerhouse dies
Longtime county planner 'leaves extraordinary legacy'
By CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 4:23 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 5:22 a.m.
Sonoma County open-space pioneer Charlie Cooke, a crusty ex-military man who advised two White House administrations and considered it a badge of honor to have earned a death threat from Richard M. Nixon, died Sunday at age 77.
"He died at home, and he died just as the sun was coming up Sunday morning," said his wife of 30 years, Sara Peterson. "He was always looking to the west, to the future."
Her husband, for decades a powerhouse on the Sonoma County Planning Commission and father of the county's unique effort to purchase and perpetually preserve vast tracts of land through its Open Space District, was weakened by a long fight with lymphoma and pulmonary fibrosis.
One of Cooke's proudest days came just two months ago when he agreed to convey to Sonoma County a conservation easement on his historic, 193-acre ranch off of Sonoma Valley's Lovall Road. His parents, personal friends of Jack London and his wife, Charmian, bought the ranch as a retirement home in 1938.
Cooke, a fixture at the county government center in Santa Rosa, had hoped to be present for the supervisors' mid-October discussion of the open-space transaction, but that day he had yet another doctor's appointment at Stanford.
"I wanted to be there to explain that the county is getting a beautiful piece of property that has historical significance," he said afterward. He told The Press Democrat he especially loved the ranch's lofty views of San Francisco and Mount Tamalpais.
"I thought it should be protected, and it should stay as it is," Cooke said. "So I went ahead and did it."
The retired Air Force major and son of a famed Navy admiral came home to his family's ranch in 1985 after two intense and influential decades of service in the Pentagon and as a White House adviser.
He voted Republican in those days, though more recently he signed on early as a backer of Barack Obama. When Nixon became president in 1969, he went to work for Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson.
As a specialist on Vietnam, Cooke took part in the writing of the Pentagon Papers -- a collection of top-secret memos detailing the history of the war. When those papers were slipped to the New York Times in 1971, Nixon reportedly misidentified Cooke as the source of the leak.
"This Cooke," Nixon said during a taped conversation with National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman . . . "I want him killed . . . Why does Elliot sit there and defend the son of a bitch?"
Cooke returned to California after Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated President Gerald Ford in 1976. He worked several years for Wilson Riles, the state's Superintendent of Schools, and then came home to the family ranch in Sonoma.
He became deeply involved in county land-use issues: gravel mining, efforts to introduce commuter rail, regulations on vineyard development, farmland protection.
He became known as "Commissioner Curmudgeon" through the course of a long, fiercely opinionated and independent run on the Sonoma County Planning Commission. Admirers say his greatest contribution to the county was his lead role in creating and persuading agriculture leaders to support the taxpayer-financed Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District.
"When you think about all that the district has accomplished, that is an extraordinary legacy -- and that's before considering the dedication of his own land to permanent open space," said Pete Golis, former editorial director of The Press Democrat and someone who relished his talks with Cooke.
Golis continued, "People said he was crusty and curmudgeonly, but I always enjoyed talking to him. He was direct. Sometimes, it would be helpful if more people were willing to spend a little less time dancing around an issue."
Longtime friend Bob Anderson said, "The fact we have an open space district is a result of the work Charlie did."
Anderson is a member the Open Space Authority and chairman of the Regional Water Quality Control Board. He said that in 2031, when the voter-approved quarter-cent sales tax for Sonoma County open space acquisition expires, "Somebody should look back and say, 'He was the guy. He did it.'"
Anderson saw Cooke at his home Friday night. He was very weak and under hospice care, but he and Anderson enjoyed what would be their last talk.
Anderson said everyone who cared about Cooke "should know that at the end he was at peace. He went a rested, proud man."
In addition to his wife, Cooke is survived by his daughters from his first marriage, Meg Cooke of Los Angeles and Stephanie Cooke of Seattle; sisters, Maynard Horiuchi and Elizabeth Field, both of Sonoma; and nephews Adrian and Theo St. Francis, also of Sonoma.
Cooke, Charles Maynard
DOB 10/19/1931 ~DOD 12/14/2008 HI
CHARLES MAYNARD COOKE (Age 77) A retired military officer who spent his life in public service, died at home in Sonoma, California on December 14, 2008 of complications from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and pulmonary fibrosis. Mr. Cooke was born in Honolulu, HI and attended high school in California and Tsingtao, China. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1953. He was among the quarter of the Naval Academy graduating class that year commissioned in the US Air Force. He received his MA in history from the University of Washington, with a focus on Chinese history and language. In 1961, Mr. Cooke accepted a position at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO, becoming an associate professor of history, teaching one of the first inter-disciplinary courses on Communist revolutionary warfare and starting the first Chinese language course at a US service academy. Mr. Cooke went to Saigon in 1966 with the Pacification Planning Group where he assisted in writing, in conjunction with the Vietnamese General Staff, the first joint pacification plan for Vietnam. Following his return from Vietnam, he served in the East Asia division of the Office of the Secretary of Defense where he analyzed political and military affairs on Vietnam for the Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs (ISA). Toward the end of his duty at the Pentagon, he was one of the authors of the Pentagon Papers which chronicled the evolution of U.S. policy in Indochina. Mr. Cooke then served as Special Advisor on Vietnam to Under Secretary of State Elliot Richardson. He was instrumental in developing teams to go to Vietnam to assess the situation on the ground. Subsequently he accompanied Richardson to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and headed a new Office of Special Concerns where he worked to foster equality of educational opportunity. Mr. Cooke later became HEW;s deputy assistant secretary for education legislation. Mr. Cooke then served as a policy advisor on federal education programs and legislation for Wilson Riles, California's State Superintendent of Public Instruction. His legislative work at the federal and state level made significant contributions to enactment of provisions for distributing funds to priority education needs. Through activities associated with a highly regarded zinfandel vineyard he planted in 1980, Mr. Cooke became involved in Sonoma County civic issues, spearheading the campaign to establish the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District. He was appointed to the Sonoma County Planning Commission in 1991 and remained a leader on Sonoma County land use issues for nearly 20 years. He is survived by his wife of 30 years, Sara Peterson; his sisters Maynard Cooke Horiuchi and Elizabeth Field; his daughters Meg Cooke and Stephanie Cooke; his sister-in-law Susan Peterson (Raymond St. Francis); and his nephews Adrian and Theo St. Francis. No services are scheduled at this time. Remembrances in in Mr. Cooke's name may be made to the Interstitial Lung Disease Program at Stanford University, Gift Processing, 326 Galvez Street, Stanford, CA 94305-6105.
More on Charlie from a local news item:
Open space powerhouse dies
Longtime county planner 'leaves extraordinary legacy'
By CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 4:23 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 5:22 a.m.
Sonoma County open-space pioneer Charlie Cooke, a crusty ex-military man who advised two White House administrations and considered it a badge of honor to have earned a death threat from Richard M. Nixon, died Sunday at age 77.
"He died at home, and he died just as the sun was coming up Sunday morning," said his wife of 30 years, Sara Peterson. "He was always looking to the west, to the future."
Her husband, for decades a powerhouse on the Sonoma County Planning Commission and father of the county's unique effort to purchase and perpetually preserve vast tracts of land through its Open Space District, was weakened by a long fight with lymphoma and pulmonary fibrosis.
One of Cooke's proudest days came just two months ago when he agreed to convey to Sonoma County a conservation easement on his historic, 193-acre ranch off of Sonoma Valley's Lovall Road. His parents, personal friends of Jack London and his wife, Charmian, bought the ranch as a retirement home in 1938.
Cooke, a fixture at the county government center in Santa Rosa, had hoped to be present for the supervisors' mid-October discussion of the open-space transaction, but that day he had yet another doctor's appointment at Stanford.
"I wanted to be there to explain that the county is getting a beautiful piece of property that has historical significance," he said afterward. He told The Press Democrat he especially loved the ranch's lofty views of San Francisco and Mount Tamalpais.
"I thought it should be protected, and it should stay as it is," Cooke said. "So I went ahead and did it."
The retired Air Force major and son of a famed Navy admiral came home to his family's ranch in 1985 after two intense and influential decades of service in the Pentagon and as a White House adviser.
He voted Republican in those days, though more recently he signed on early as a backer of Barack Obama. When Nixon became president in 1969, he went to work for Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson.
As a specialist on Vietnam, Cooke took part in the writing of the Pentagon Papers -- a collection of top-secret memos detailing the history of the war. When those papers were slipped to the New York Times in 1971, Nixon reportedly misidentified Cooke as the source of the leak.
"This Cooke," Nixon said during a taped conversation with National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman . . . "I want him killed . . . Why does Elliot sit there and defend the son of a bitch?"
Cooke returned to California after Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated President Gerald Ford in 1976. He worked several years for Wilson Riles, the state's Superintendent of Schools, and then came home to the family ranch in Sonoma.
He became deeply involved in county land-use issues: gravel mining, efforts to introduce commuter rail, regulations on vineyard development, farmland protection.
He became known as "Commissioner Curmudgeon" through the course of a long, fiercely opinionated and independent run on the Sonoma County Planning Commission. Admirers say his greatest contribution to the county was his lead role in creating and persuading agriculture leaders to support the taxpayer-financed Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District.
"When you think about all that the district has accomplished, that is an extraordinary legacy -- and that's before considering the dedication of his own land to permanent open space," said Pete Golis, former editorial director of The Press Democrat and someone who relished his talks with Cooke.
Golis continued, "People said he was crusty and curmudgeonly, but I always enjoyed talking to him. He was direct. Sometimes, it would be helpful if more people were willing to spend a little less time dancing around an issue."
Longtime friend Bob Anderson said, "The fact we have an open space district is a result of the work Charlie did."
Anderson is a member the Open Space Authority and chairman of the Regional Water Quality Control Board. He said that in 2031, when the voter-approved quarter-cent sales tax for Sonoma County open space acquisition expires, "Somebody should look back and say, 'He was the guy. He did it.'"
Anderson saw Cooke at his home Friday night. He was very weak and under hospice care, but he and Anderson enjoyed what would be their last talk.
Anderson said everyone who cared about Cooke "should know that at the end he was at peace. He went a rested, proud man."
In addition to his wife, Cooke is survived by his daughters from his first marriage, Meg Cooke of Los Angeles and Stephanie Cooke of Seattle; sisters, Maynard Horiuchi and Elizabeth Field, both of Sonoma; and nephews Adrian and Theo St. Francis, also of Sonoma.
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