Chapter 3
Dealing With the Times:
Owen J. Cook, 1965-71
He was very intent on doing his job correctly, but he hit
administering the university in the early 1960s, which was a hard time
anywhere. It showed up here, too. …He was dealing with the times.
--Barbara Elkington
On March 17, 1969, nearly five years after Owen J. Cook began work as the third
president of the Church College of Hawaii, the campus newspaper, Ke Alaka`i, published
an account of “a typical day” in his life. The article reported that the fifty-four-year-old
Cook had maintained the habit of rising early, developed during his youth as a Utah farm
boy, as an LDS missionary in Toronto, Canada, and as a World War II Navy
communications officer. His twenty minutes of jogging was part of a regimen he had
maintained at CCH since 1965 by way of setting a good example for his faculty, most of
who were under age fifty.1
With exercise and breakfast out of the way, Cook arrived at his office in the
McKay Building at 7:00 a.m. to read for an hour. He divided his time between
professional publications and the scriptures, feeling that it was important for the president
of a Church College to “keep up on” both. His formal working day as the top
administrator of the fourteen-year-old school began at 8:00 a.m., on this particular day in
a meeting with architect Kotaro Koizumi to discuss plans for additional low-rent housing
for his sixty-person faculty. Cook was also working on a salary schedule that would
1
Spence Brady, “Church College on Physical Fitness Kick,” Honolulu Advertiser, February 11, 1965.
compensate his instructors 20 percent more than the salaries allotted for instructors at
mainland schools—even then, this rate would only partially offset the high cost of living
in Hawaii.2
At 9:30 a.m. Cook took a break and donned gear for a series of handball games
with his partner Francis Aki against basketball coach Boyd Jarmin and Robert Laird of
the Education Department. A former teacher-principal in Tonga, Laird had been at CCH
since 1959 and, with Billie Hollingshead and Ross Allen, had helped make CCH’s
Teacher Education program one of the most popular majors on campus.3 Jarmin, with
coaches John Lowell and Carl McGowan, were attracting both local and national
attention to the college’s rugby and men’s volleyball teams.
In the hard-fought match, Cook squeaked by his two opponents, and then returned
to his office where Academic Dean Nephi Georgi had borrowed Cook’s office to carry
out his responsibilities as both academic dean and director of the continuing education
program. As one of the original faculty, Georgi was one of the most experienced men in
Cook’s administration. His major problem was how to slow faculty turnover and
improve the overall academic standards which, at the time Cook became President,
depressingly listed one of every six students on academic probation.4
At noon Cook dashed home for a half-hour lunch with his wife, Ellen. Of their
two daughters and two sons, only John, a student at Kahuku High School, was living at
home. Their two daughters, Carol and Alice, were married. Son James was in the U.S.
Evalyn Sandburg, “Known for His Kindness and Memory,” in Following the Vision: Addresses and
Statements of the Presidents of CCH-BYUH, 1955-2000, edited by Greg Gubler, 2:27, unpublished bound
typescript, Joseph F. Smith Archives, Brigham Young University Hawaii, Laie, Hawaii.
3
Robert W. Laird, interviewed by Kenneth Baldridge, August 17, 1971, OH-167, 14-15.
4
Nephi Georgi, interviewed by Kenneth W. Baldridge, April 21, 1986, 3. Cameron’s report served as his
dissertation: J. Elliot Cameron, “A Survey of Basic Educational Opportunities Available to Members of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1966).
2
2
Navy. At 12:30 Cook was back in the office meeting with the Educational Policies
Curriculum Committee, composed of faculty, administrators, and students, to discuss
plans for the proposed 4-1-4 academic calendar program—one of many that CCH
experimented with as it became a major source of teachers in the Pacific region.5
Cook’s “typical day” continued with more meetings. Business manager Dennis
Agle and Ralph Olson, the dean of students, joined him to discuss plans for the Ralph E.
Woolley Library, a future student center, and forty-two apartments for married students
that would rent monthly for from $100 to $120. They also discussed the budget for
remodeling the Technology Building, one of the first permanent structures that the
building missionaries had completed in 1958.
Next, Cook conferred with the committee planning commencement exercises
scheduled for May 15. Speaking to the graduating class of 100 would be Gordon B.
Hinckley, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles since October 1961. Student
speakers would be two magna cum laude graduates: Darlene Yvonne Gardner of Kailua,
Oahu, and Mary Catherine Thomas of Laie, the wife of English Department chair Gordon
Thomas.
The student reporter observed that Cook made extensive use of the telephone and
an IBM Executary, a dictating machine for memos and letters. Cook usually left his
office about 5:00p.m. to spend an hour with Ellen and John before dinner, even on
evenings when he had a social engagement.
5
Laird, OH-167, 19-20.
3
Cook’s Background
As busy as this “typical day” had been, it was actually less strenuous than the
years from 1957 to 1964 when Cook had worked five days a week as assistant
superintendent of business in the Long Beach Unified School District, the twenty-fifth
largest district in the nation. After ten years, he worked at Mount Diablo School District
at Concord, California. Then Friday afternoon he flew to Utah where he interviewed
teachers at the Church Administration Building on Saturday, in his capacity as executive
secretary of the Pacific Board of Education. Then he flew back to California on Sunday,
returned to his district office Monday morning and began the cycle all over again.
The fifth child in a family of ten, Cook was born and raised in Utah. After
serving a mission, he married his mission president’s daughter, Ellen Rich. He graduated
from the University of Utah in 1940 but interrupted his studies at the University of
California in Berkeley to serve in the U.S. Navy. He also worked as a high school
teacher in Utah. Cook received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah before becoming a
public school administrator.
Since Cook was well established in California’s public school system at a
comfortable salary, it was a surprise to some that he would want to be president of the
college. As executive secretary of the Pacific Board of Education he had been intimately
involved with CCH and all other Church schools since 1957. He probably knew more
about the college than anyone not actually in Laie. Ross R. Allen (1957-66), who joined
the college as registrar before becoming chair of the Department of Secondary Education,
was among those startled by the decision but considered it kind of a pleasant surprise.”6
6
Ross R. Allen, interviewed by Kenneth Baldridge, January 24, 1990, OH-354, 26-27.
4
Nephi Georgi, who had served as Wootton’s head of the Division of Arts and
Sciences and became Cook’s academic dean, said that Cook was “a popular enough
figure with the faculty because he seemed fair and in favor of our wants and needs where
he possibly could [be].” But the fact that his educational experience came from the high
school level, not the college level, weighed against him. Some, according to Georgi, had
a hard time taking him seriously, while others were “professional enough to say…’let’s
give the guy a chance.’”7
Georgi did not mention that the situation would be fraught with at least some
tension no matter who the president would be, simply because the first two presidents had
been encouraged to leave. Both Reuben Law, the founding president, and his successor,
Richard Wootton, had been assigned to take sabbatical leaves so that they would have a
year to find other positions. Cook served as acting president during Wootton’s leave,
beginning on July 1, 1964, and officially took over the college on July, 1965.
Cook relied on Georgi, Kay J. Andersen, Wayne Allison, and Ralph D. Olson as
significant members of his administrative team. Kay J. Andersen, a key manager, helped
implement recommendations for the three-year reaccreditation received in January 1964.
Andersen had come to Hawaii in 1960 to teach in the Education Department. From the
first, he was troubled over the shortage of well-trained administrators in LDS Church
schools in the Pacific. “Sometimes we rely too much on goodwill and brotherhood,” he
mused in a 1986 interview. “That [is] all…very important. But when it comes down to
seasoned administrators, sometimes I think there has been some lack of attention there.
And I see myself in that light.”8
7
8
Nephi and Hedi Georgi, interviewed by Kenneth Baldridge, March 19, 1986, OH-289, 4.
Kay J. Andersen, interviewed by Kenneth Baldridge, March 19, 1986, OH-289, 4.
5
Olson was principal of the church’s Liahona High School in Tonga when
Wootton recruited him to come to CCH as Dean of Students in 1959. He remained at
CCH until 1973 serving under Wootton, Cook, and Stephen L. Brower in the same
position until he retired in 1972, a fourteen-year tenure during which he was remembered
for his amicable relations with both students and faculty.9 Cook told Olson that part of
his job description as dean of students would involve recruiting qualified students
throughout the Pacific and Asia.
The Tongans, in particular, loved Olson and took advantage of his forgiving
nature to play practical jokes on him. Student Howard Lua recalled that Olson and Cook
performed in the annual assembly presented by the faculty and in which they “dress[ed]
up as sugar plum fairies and [did] a dance routine on stage. This kind of loosening up by
the administration really helped the students to get closer to them.”10
Added Responsibility for Student Morality
As one who knew the internal workings of the college, Cook was aware of the
major problems he faced concerning curriculum, faculty, facilities, public support, the
Polynesian Cultural Center, and with the growing student body. His worries, however,
were greater than those other college presidents in the turbulent sixties. Many college
presidents grappled with social unrest, wholesale student rejection of the university’s in
loco parentis role, and the ongoing need to keep the campus focused on academic
concerns. Cook did all of those jobs plus answering to the Pacific Board of Education for
his students’ moral and spiritual well-being. Like his two presidential predecessors and
Ralph D. Olson was the college’s first historian: “The History of The Church College of Hawaii, 19551960” (M.A. thesis, Utah State University, 1961), BYUH Archives, Archive 4.
10
Howard K. Lua, “Campus Experiences,” interviewed by Mo`ale Finau, October 19, 1984, OH-227, 10.
9
6
those who would follow him, Cook was held accountable for the character and spiritual
qualities of CCH’s students as well as their academic achievement.
In fact, in a 1980 interview with Kenneth Baldridge, Cook identified students’
moral standards as the chief source of difficulty he had during his seven years in Laie.
He worked closely with the bishops and Church leaders to help the students overcome
problems of drugs and immorality. But many of the students at CCH were young people
of marriageable age and “filled with the passions of youth.” He reported that some
Church leaders in New Zealand, Tonga, or Samoa heard reports about immorality among
students at CCH and took steps to keep their local youth from enrolling in the Hawaii
college. This situation was frustrating to Cook, since he seldom had an opportunity to
give correct information or try to handle an individual problem. Along with the civil
rights movement and accelerating resistance to the Vietnam War, Cook was concerned
about manifestations of the volatile youth culture that had moved to the beaches of
Oahu’s North Shore. It was fueled by rock music and drugs and rebellion against
traditional values of modesty and morality.
Ishmael Stagner, who returned to Laie in 1963 from Arizona State University,
noticed that the 1960s had hit the island hard all the way from Punalu`u in the south to
the surfing areas of Sunset Beach and Pipeline to the north. “You could see purple and
paisley painted coconut trees with the peace sign and even a nudist camp beyond
Kahuku,” Stagner said. He was also aware of more serious problems of a generally
elevated crime rate, break-ins, thefts, and other serious crimes on campus.11
Donna Brown, a mainland student who was living in Kahuku in 2005,
remembered Cook as a “very friendly president, always in aloha shirt, always smiling,
11
Ishmael Stagner, interviewed by Alf Pratte, October 27, 2003, 20.
7
and knowing everybody. He had a good attitude and the students loved him a lot.” In
fact, she added, “They still do,” she said in 1986, fifteen years after Cook left the campus.
“Whenever I see him return, they flock to see him.” However, she felt that Cook was not
tough enough on dorm raids, fights, and other infractions. “Students would not get kicked
out of school or suspended.”12
That may have been the view from the women’s dormitories. Nevertheless
soldiers from Schofield Barracks and those on R and R from Vietnam would cruise
campus looking for girls to pick up. Cook established the policy that women students
could not date soldiers. Another common punishment was to “ground” students who
violated regulations, so they could not leave campus for a week or so.13
Cook’s major antidote to the rumors was to safeguard the morality of students, by
preparing them for temple marriage, missions, professions, and worthy family life. In
addition to the required religion classes this was done through devotionals, Sunday night
firesides and through the campus wards where many students had positions of trust and
responsibility in branch and ward leadership positions. They included: bishop’s
counselors, clerks, Sunday School teachers, Relief Society teachers, visiting and home
teachers, committee chairs, and participants in many projects and projects. Many held
responsible positions in Honolulu and wards on the islands of Oahu and other islands.
CCH led the mission in convert baptisms and many students were called on missions.
Cook would typically ask the bishops, “Now, how’s the morality in your ward?”
Based on their experience counseling students in their wards, the bishops painted a
sometimes troubling picture. One bishop told Cook he had counseled at least forty
12
13
Donna Brown, interviewed by Mei Lin Huang, February 18, 1986, OH-274, 10-11.
Moffatt, interviewed February 2, 2005.
8
students. Concerned, Cook forwarded these figures to Harvey Taylor, chief administrator
of the Unified Church System. “It probably went to the Brethren,” Cook said, adding, “I
would say that [morality] would be probably the biggest worry of any president at any
time serving in an institution like this.”14
Concern over eroding moral standards was stressed in a report that J. Elliot
Cameron completed for the First Presidency on educational opportunities available to
Church members worldwide in July 1965. Because CCH was less than a decade old, it
got special notice—not all of it commendatory. “There was a strong feeling that many of
the things that were happening” at CCH were based on the assumption that it was
“another established arts and sciences college,” Cameron recalled. Such a pattern was
troubling, “simply because the values that had been established, that had been determined
as the school was established were being eroded. It was out of that particular study that
there came a change in emphasis and a re-direction of the Church College program.”15
Cameron agreed that many of the problems on campus were triggered by
nonmember students who were bringing elements of the drug culture with them, resulting
in “a lot of eroding of moral and spiritual values.” His study made a strong
recommendation: “Either they should bring the institution back into line with the
objectives of the school or close the school.”16 One step was to reduce the number of
non-Mormon students. “There was a distinct move on the part of administrators in Salt
Lake City during my last year to cut the number sharply,” Cook recalled. During his first
14
Cook, OH-105, 36-37.
J. Elliot Cameron, Oral History 290, interviewed by Kenneth W. Baldridge, April 21 1986, 3. Cameron’s
report served as his dissertation: J. Elliot Cameron, “A Survey of Basic Educational Opportunities
Available to Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young
University, 1966).
16
Ibid.
15
9
year, about four hundred non-Mormons were attending CCH—about 40-50 percent of the
student body. The following year the number had been cut in half. By 1968-69 there
were 2.3 members to every nonmember; and by 1971-72, the number of nonmembers
was down to a hundred.17
But CCH was not the only campus where LDS youth and outsiders flirted with
alcohol and other drugs of choice, and immorality. For example, CCH librarian Riley
Moffat, who was a student bus driver in 1969, drove a busload of BYU athletes from
Waikiki back to campus after they had lost in a game with their smaller sister institution.
A significant number of the athletes were intoxicated, he recalled.18
Another concern for Church leaders was the “brain drain” that resulted when
CCH graduates failed to return to their homelands in Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, and other
Polynesian countries where their education should have helped raise the standard of
living among their people.19 In October 1970, after Cook had been president for six
years, Tupua Tamasese IV, prime minister of Western Samoa, visited the college and
expressed his appreciation for the Church’s assistance in helping Samoans and other
Polynesians gain an education and return to their homelands. At Cook’s invitation, he
addressed the student body, urging the seventy Samoan students to help “build” their
home and country. He said he needed college-educated Samoans to help govern the
country.20 Cook was also frustrated at his inability to get an accurate story to the Church
Board of Education. The fact that Harvey Taylor of the Unified Church System had only
two hours to [present a report on world-wide educational concerns once or twice a month
17
18
19
20
Gubler, Following the Vision, 2:42; Craig, “Chronicle of Events,” 127.
Riley Moffat, interviewed by Alf Pratte, Laie, February 2, 2005.
Gubler, Following the Vision, 2:39.
“Samoan Government Leader Visits Laie Students,” Ke Alaka`i, October 16, 1970, 1.
10
did not allow enough time to report the more positive aspects at CCH which were
receiving coverage by the Hawaii media.
“Firsts” and Other Goals and Accomplishments
According to history professor Robert D. Craig who chronicled the 1960s, that
decade was “probably CCH’s most successful year[s] in the area of sports,” with 1968 as
a particularly sparkling year. The rugby team had twelve wins and no losses, bringing
their overall record to 79-2. In basketball the Seasiders placed second in the Hawaii
College Conference with a record of 15-2. The soccer team placed fourth in its league.
The wrestling team produced four individual state champions. The volleyball
team placed second in the state tournament to the defending national champions from the
Outrigger Canoe Club coached by CCH’s John Lowell. One CCH player, Pedro Velasco,
was named to the National Open All-American team. Velasco, Larry Milliken, and Eddie
Kalima were chosen as collegiate all-Americans. CCH even had an international
champion in Felipe Pomar of Peru, who won his second World Surfing Championship at
Punta Rocas Beach in Lima, Peru, in March 1966. A Peruvian native, Pomar originally
majored in psychology.21
CCH might have won another rugby championship in 1968 but the Seasiders
declined to play in the national tournament because it was scheduled on Sunday.22
Lowell said that ever since CCH nearly won the 1968 national volleyball championship
as a club team, interest in the “Cinderella Kids” and talk about “big time volleyball” in
Craig, “Chronicle of Events,” 130-31, 81.
“CCH Rugby Team Declines Bid to Coast, Can’t Play on Sunday,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, June 6,
1968.
21
22
11
Laie had increased.23 Lowell got queries from top players in California, even though he
said his team was composed of all local players—not imports. By the following year, the
1968-69 yearbook showed three California volleyball players: Dennis Largey, Dick
Templeman, and Larry Milliken.
Jarmin coached both the track and basketball teams from 1964 to 1969. He then
returned to Provo where he had earlier played on the 1951 National Invitational
Tournament (NIT) championship team. Lowell, a former Olympics coach, who
developed the “dive and roll” technique in volleyball, was directing a new training
technique for volleyball players and other athletes at CCH known as the “pain barrier.”24
The regimen demanded that athletes do twenty trips up and down the pool
bleachers, twenty minutes of wind sprints, seventy squats, and eighty sit-ups and be able
to lift half the athlete’s body weight. For diversity the athletes faced the long distance
run to Laie Point or, to Tanaka store and back, a round trip of ten miles. Such hard work
and discipline paid off.
Academically, Cook was able to capitalize on Wootton’s achievement in moving
CCH from a two-year college to an accredited four-year institution on a well-built and
permanent campus, complete with student dormitories and faculty housing. In October
1963, the campus joined in celebrating the dedication of the Polynesian Cultural Center
to provide jobs for students and help preserve Pacific cultures.
Two years later came another celebration: the 1965 centennial of Laie’s founding
as the gathering place for Saints in the Pacific. On Thanksgiving Day, 1969, the campus
celebrated the jubilee of the Hawaii Temple’s dedication by President Heber J. Grant. In
Jim Easterwood, “ CCH in Big Time Volleyball,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 28, 1968.
Jim Easterwood, “Seasiders Prove a Real ‘Pain’ to Foes,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, July 16, 1969. See
also Boyd Jarman, interviewed by Kenneth Baldridge, August 17, 1971, OH-388, 14-15.
23
24
12
conjunction with the events, a special documentary was shown over TV station-KGMB,
owned by LDS member Cecil Heftel.
Robert Craig chronicles a significant number of other “firsts” that took place
under Cook:

The first full-time doctor and nurse hired for the campus dispensary.

The establishment of Phi Alpha Theta as CCH’s first international fraternity.

The college’s first television Book of Mormon class, sponsored by the
Department of Religion with an enrollment of eighty-seven students.

The first summer school, begun in 1966 under the direction of Wylie Swapp for
the Education Department. “Principles preferred to send their teachers to Laie to
upgrade their credentials,” Swapp said. A fleet of cars was also available for
student teachers to use to travel to public schools each day to do their practice
teaching.

A new form of student government, beginning in the 1970-71 school year.25

The first Tongan student body president. Vice president of assemblies Sosaia T.
Paongo was advanced to that position when the elected student, Brent Wilson left
the school.

The first Miss CCH, Lenore Kahaupio, who also participated in the Miss Hawaii
contest.

The campus’s radio station, KCCH. Thanks to the energy and enthusiasm of a
group of volunteers, students in the dorms could hear broadcasting seven nights a
week from Room 78 of the language laboratory.26
25
Craig, “Chronicle of Events,” 141.
13
Along with his accomplishments in the curriculum and with the students and the
community, Cook directed an extensive building program to meet the demands of the
student body which had grown to 1,300 students. The Ralph E. Woolley Library was
named April 23, 1968, and plans were initiated for the first married students housing
units. Permanent maintenance buildings were also planned and constructed, except for
the administrative offices.
The industrial arts building finally got air conditioning. The “hales” or dorms were
filled (with a status of full amortization). To create proper drainage, the football field
was filled, graded, and replanted. The running track and the metal shop were
discontinued.
CCH’s faculty, according to Cook, “really went the extra miles with the students
especially for holidays, family home evenings, and entertainment of the students in their
homes.” Thanks to Cook’s efforts, faculty salaries were established 20 percent above
those of the mainland schools. They ranged from $5,460 to $7,800 in Rank I to $6,890 to
$11,240 in Rank IV, but housing rented for $80 a month for a two-bedroom/one bath
dwelling and $100 a month for four-bedroom/two bath units.27
Cook also developed better liaison with BYU in Provo and continued a program of
faculty exchanges between the two institutions. The exchange program and improved
salaries were part of a multifaceted effort, along with paid periodic leaves, to reduce the
high faculty turnover.28
26
27
28
Ibid., 90.
Ibid., 3, 168.
Ibid., 3.
14
During Cook’s administration, international students topped the 40 percent mark of
the student body. To symbolize the school’s international hospitality, Cook launched the
practice of displaying the flags of their home nations and also began recruiting trips in
Asia. In addition to 500 students from Hawaii and 300 from the mainland, the college
boasted about 100 students each from New Zealand, Tonga, and Western Samoa; and 20
from American Samoa and from other areas.29
During the 1960s, Church leaders discouraged mainlanders from enrolling at CCH
because intermarriage seemed to be a major factor contributing to reducing the
“returnability” of international graduates. The no-mainlander policy went through
periodic cycles, depending on enrollment levels. For a time, BYU sponsored a “Semester
in Hawaii” program for its Provo students, but this program terminated at the end of
winter semester 1982.
The “returnability” policy, in contrast, remained a matter of keen attention and
considerable perplexity. “We did not see the CCH as a way station to mainland living,”
Cook explained in 2004. “If a [foreign] student married a mainland resident, he/she
became [a] U.S. citizen. Students wanted to return to their homeland, but only if they
saw some means for their employment.”30 Nowhere is Cook’s passion for “returnability”
better seen than in his enthusiastic speech before the Phi Delta Kappa fraternity in
Honolulu, December 29, 1970. He told a parable of two Tongan youths, Sione, and
Mele, who graduated from BYU with degrees in education. He contrasted them with
imported American teachers:
29
30
Gubler, Following the Vision, 2:42.
Owen and Helen Cook, Letter to Pratte, June 23, 2004, 2.
15
Sione and Mele will be more effective teachers than many counterparts of haole
extraction who have been brought in from the mainland United States. Why? Because
they know the language, the customs, the people whom they serve. There will be greater
longevity of service. Their comfort and love is in their homeland. The haole teacher, on
the other hand, will miss family and friends very much. While the haole had looked
forward to travel and experience in this small foreign country, when he arrives, he finds it
very small, surrounded by water, flat, and with poor medical and hospital services, and
[babies] frequently delivered by midwives. The American teacher can hardly wait for the
termination of his three-year contract to get on his way home. You can see that a welleducated Tongan teacher can be a greater asset in his homeland than a well-educated
stranger from America who, in three years in Tonga, will hardly have learned the
customs. An interesting story? Yes! And it is repeated many times over for Filipino,
Samoan, and Tahitian youth [who attend CCH].31
Another challenge for keeping the enrollment levels high was Hawaii’s establishment
of its community college program. Leeward Oahu had a new community college, and
Hawaii Loa was being built on the windward side of Oahu as a four-year liberal arts
institution. Cook appealed to the Board of Education for more support. He pointed out
as “a serious problem” the fact that BYU “advertised liberally” in Hawaii and drew off
many of CCH’s prospective students. “We cannot blame a young person who desires to
get away from home to go to college,” he wrote in his thoughtful analysis. “We cannot
object to students leaving here and attending BYU and getting away from home in their
31
Owen Cook, “Article for Alumni News,” June 7, 1971, in “Following the Vision,” 2:39-40.
16
higher education. This is part of the liberal arts program; travel increases horizons. At
the same time however, this cuts deeply into our potential for students at the College.”32
Another ongoing concern was Cook’s responsibility to see that students with limited
financial means could have jobs to underwrite their board, room, clothing, tithing, tuition,
books, and incidental needs, without competing unduly with their need to focus on their
education. To encourage keeping jobs in Laie, Cook supported expansion of the
Polynesian Cultural Center. One-hundred feet of the east boundary of the college was
turned over to the Polynesian Cultural Center, and PCC provided its first $100,000 grant
to the college. Students employed at the PCC worked at least nineteen hours per week
(except in the summer) to meet their financial obligations to the college. With
considerable satisfaction, he explained to one student how to borrow money for tuition,
board and room, tithing, spending money, and wardrobe, assuring her that if she worked
faithfully twenty hours per week, her first loan would be paid up in full before the next
academic year. Then she could start over with her second loan.33
As far as classroom performance, Cook reported “an excellent cross-section of
student ability academically.” The college held rather firmly to the requirement for a “C”
average for graduation. In addition students became skilled artisans, mechanics, rough
and finish carpenters, plumbing and steel metal, brick layers, accountants, trainers at
PCC, entertainers and cultural demonstrators.
On February 17, 1969, the second Language Training Mission (the first was in Provo
on BYU’s campus), opened on the CCH campus, focused on teaching the languages of
the Pacific and Asia. The college donated one of the dormitories with room for about
32
33
Quoted in Ibid., 5, 132-33.
Owen and Ellen Cook, letter to Alf Pratte, June 23, 2004, 2.
17
fifty men. The missionaries ate in the student cafeteria but otherwise focused on their
studies. Its first president was Kenneth Orton, a Japanese and Asian Studies professor.34
Sorrowful “firsts” were the first casualties from the Vietnam conflict. In October
1969, the Ke Alaka`i reported that Pfc. Robert L. Lazarus from Kamuela, Hawaii, was the
224th fatality from Hawaii and the first CCH student to die in the war. An active member
of the Hui Ali`i Club and a dancer at the Polynesian Cultural Center during his freshman
year, he had enlisted and had been in Vietnam for seven months when the helicopter on
which he was the crew chief crashed and burned. He would have been due for a rest and
recreation leave in Hawaii in November and would have turned twenty-one the next
month on Christmas Eve.
James Leslie Littler, who graduated from BYUH in 1965 and was Sunday School
president of CCH Second Ward, had enlisted in the Marine Corps. He and his entire
crew were killed when his helicopter was shot down in Vietnam. Littler’s funeral was
one of the largest ever held at the Honolulu Tabernacle.
The Personal Touch
One of Cook’s personal attributes, bonding him with his students, was his
commitment to learn the name of every student, even though the number grew from 907
in 1964 to 1,307 by the time he left.
Elder Thomas S. Monson, who had become a member of the Quorum of the
Twelve in 1963 and was himself no slouch at remembering names and faces, recalled
how Cook’s ability to remember student names impressed him when he was visiting
34
Owen Cook, letter to Alf Pratte, June 12, 2004, 1. The first Missionary Training Center had opened at
BYU in Provo in December 1961.
18
campus. “As we stood in the reception line, Brother and Sister Cook and Sister Monson
and I, Brother Cook would meet a Tongan or Samoan or Tahitian, or mainlander and
unfailingly would…call each one by name. I thought that was an interesting attribute.”35
According to Historian Kenneth Baldridge, however, Cook “did not have a
particular ability in that regard.”36 What Cook had was a willingness to work hard at
establishing good rapport with students through recognizing them as individuals. Cook
disclosed his method—and the hard work it required, in an interview in 2004: When
each student arrived, he had his office staff make up an ID card with the student’s name,
photograph, and country on it.37 He spent about half an hour every day going through
these cards and practicing the pronunciation of their names. He also studied yearbooks.
After he got started, he could easily pick out the students he hadn’t yet met. “I would
look for a student on campus that I knew and say hello and talk to him. It really opened
up friendship because a person’s name is important. You stop to think about it—you
never get acquainted with people, their family background, until you first know their
names.”38
Cook’s Departure
President McKay died on January 18, 1970, at age ninety-six after a lengthy
period of increasing weakness and disability from minor strokes. Joseph Fielding Smith,
McKay’s successor as tenth president of the Church, had visited Hawaii as an apostle and
returned in 1970 as Church president to help celebrate the school’s fifteenth anniversary
35
Thomas S. Monson, interviewed by Kenneth W. Baldridge, February 12, 1982, OH-175, 3.
Kenneth W. Baldridge, “Church College of Hawaii—BYU-Hawaii, 1955-86: A Historian’s
Perspective,” chap. 3.
37
Owen and Ellen Cook, Letter to Pratte, June 23, 2004.
38
Cook, OH-166, 35.
36
19
and reflect on the missionary service of his father, apostle and Church President Joseph F.
Smith, who was sustained as Church president in January 1970 and died in December
1972.
Cook recalled that President Joseph Fielding Smith, as an apostle, had candidly
told him, “I want you to know that I never did agree with setting up the Pacific Board of
Education.” To Cook, this information communicated that McKay had his own vision
for the college and his own purposes for administering the Pacific schools through his
trusted lieutenant Mendenhall, instead of using the Church Board of Education. Cook
recognized the significance of such personal mentoring: The full Board of Education
could never have spent the time developing the schools that the Pacific Board of
Education did.39 In 1970, President Smith appointed Neal A. Maxwell, then executive
vice president of the University of Utah as the new Commissioner of Church Education.
In a 1981 interview, Maxwell described some of the most important issues at
CCH during Cook’s administration: “There was no question that he’d made an important
contribution but also there seemed to be some question in my mind as to what the role of
the college was supposed to be. Was it a liberal arts college? Was it a feeder institution
for BYU? Was it Church policy to bring people up out of the islands to CCH and then
where do they go? Were they to make CCH a way-station [for] coming to the
mainland?” 40
Cook and his predecessors seriously explored all of these issues, but “a lot of
those things had not been fully addressed,” recalled Maxwell. “I don’t mean by President
Cook, but just generally. There was not a fixed policy that was in place and there was
39
40
Cook, OH-105, 9.
Neal A. Maxwell, interviewed by Kenneth Baldridge, August 11, 1981, OH-165, 3.
20
genuine ambivalence on the part of the governing board about whether someone from the
islands should be educated and return to help his own people or simply head for
America.” 41
What concerned Maxwell more was the well-known determination of Ernest L.
Wilkinson that Brigham Young University would become the hub of Church education,
with feeder junior colleges established all over the world. “We were expanding our
schools in Mexico; we were expanding them in the Pacific and it seemed to me there
wasn’t a coherent policy that took full account of what is our role and mission and how
much we can afford. I just felt the need for a new team to address those issues, and that
feeling was no denigration of those who had done well before. We were left with the
President McKay impression about what college was supposed to be and yet we really
hadn’t addressed the east rim of Asia and what we might do there.”42 Maxwell looked
past the dream to the dollars. Where would the millions of dollars come from to buy
land, build the campuses, and staff them? He put the brakes on educational expansion
and, in hindsight, was wise to do so. “The Church had built those we would be in real
trouble now,” he said in 1981.
The best way to signal that change was to bring in a new president that reflected
the current emphasis, not the old one. Cook left June 30, 1971. About a month later he
became Superintendent of Schools in the Colton (California) Joint Unified School
District. After his retirement, he and Ellen served as ordinance workers in the Los
Angeles Temple, as missionaries in the Venezuela Caracas Mission for two and a half
years, and as ordinance workers at the New Zealand Temple. In addition, they traveled
41
42
Ibid.
Ibid., 3.
21
through Europe as guests of the American International Academy, and explored Mexico,
Israel, and Egypt.43
Cook’s Contribution
When BYUH honored Owen Cook with a Distinguished Service Award twentysix years after he left the campus, he was described as one who served during a period of
growth, and an innovator, and as one whom the students regarded as a friend. Some of
his priorities were the construction of needed facilities such as the Aloha Center, the
Social Science Building, the student health center, and expansion of the library, and
housing for married students. He also pursued the growth of academic programs,
encouraging faculty to extend the ways in which they could help students in the learning
process.
In this he was visionary; and his efforts produced the first audio-tutorial program
in the Science Learning Center. He was one of the first presidents of the university to
deal with the combined changes of rapid campus growth and the need to keep strict pace
with the academic demands required for accreditation from the Western Association of
Schools and Colleges.44
The award further noted that Cook’s innovations had become “integral parts of all
disciplines on the campus.” He also encouraged the faculty to pursue doctorates. He
worked to achieve equity for them between the school’s salary structure and Hawaii’s
high cost of living.
43
44
Evalyn Sandburg, “Distinguished Service Award,” in Gubler, Following the Vision, 2:44.
Ibid., 2:44.
22
Cook had respected his predecessor’s “democratic” style “because that was the
kind of administration I had and believed in.” Interviewed in 1980, he told historian Ken
Baldridge: “Coming in, I had the totally open administrative feeling” that the “democratic
approach” was right because I realized if it [CCH] was going to become what it ought to
be, all of us would work together.”45 He saw his presidential role as being “to assist”—
by which he meant facilitating and implementing “the recommendations being made by
the people in the college.”46
Ross Allen later appraised Cook as “probably one of the best we’ve had” for
administrative details—“a different kind of administrative style, a more quiet and
efficient administration.” If he had a weakness, it was in public relations: “He was a little
bit reserved and quiet and so he didn’t aggressively pursue and button-hole political
leaders and things like that.” Of course, neither had his predecessors. Allen saw
Wootton as not being “public relations minded. His main emphasis was on Church
leaders. The first president [Reuben Law] tried to be nice to everybody.”47
Ralph Barney “was quite impressed with [Cook] because he was deliberate, and
he didn’t make any quick moves, and he was very receptive to many things.” In contrast,
Wootton had been “sometimes a kind of uncertain mover, but he was a mover. He was
pushing, and I think he was quite progressive.” Perhaps as much by policy as by personal
style, Barney saw Cook as being in Laie to “sort of slow things down,” but Barney saw
this as strength. “He wasn’t stuck on positions. He didn’t feel threatened when he had to
45
46
47
Cook, OH-166, 30.
Ibid., 30.
Ross R. Allen, interviewed by Kenneth Baldridge, January 24, 1990, OH-354, 27.
23
change his mind….I was looking for…somebody who would let me do what I wanted to
do, and he did, mostly.”48
Barbara Elkington described Cook as “a very able administrator. He knew a lot
about how to make this campus run,” she said. “Unfortunately, Cook arrived at the
University in the 1960s, a hard time to be an administrator of a university anywhere….He
was dealing with the times.”49
48
49
Ralph Barney, interviewed by Kenneth Baldridge, February 12, 1986, OH-323, 17.
Barbara Elkington, interviewed by Kenneth Baldridge, February 12, 1986, OH-323, 17.
24