William Alfred Cook*

Bill Cook was born in 1931 in Mattoon, Illinois. His father was a traveling insurance salesman who went from farm to farm throughout the Midwest selling protective farming insurance, as well as subscriptions to Prairie Farmer magazine, which was owned by Chicago radio station WLS. Because Cook's father wanted his family with him on a daily basis, the small family moved in and out of cheap hotels during the first nine years of Cook's life. Cook recalled that during the first grade, he went to nine schools in three states.

"The quality of our daily lives depended on how well my father's sales went," he said. "If he sold a $10 subscription for the station, we ate well that night. We usually slept three to a bed because it was all we could afford."

Rather than seeing this nomadic life in a negative way, however, young Cook thrived; his second-grade teacher even recommended that he skip half a grade. Besides his academic skills, Cook was socially adept and competitive. "I was always the new kid in town," he said. "I had to learn how to cope with that because I was always tested by the other kids. But I never had any trouble with my peers."

Shortly before Cook was to start fourth grade, his mother told his father it was time for the family to get off the road. Cook's father took their life savings and, with the help of a bank loan, bought two grain elevators in Canton, Illinois, where Cook spent the rest of his youth. "It was a pretty place to live," he said. "I had a dog and lots of permanent friends. I have nothing but pleasant memories of Canton."

As a teenager, Cook worked in the grain elevator for his father. He supplemented that income as a lifeguard and night watchman at the local community pool. "I went to work at the pool at seven in the evening," he explained. "After it closed, I cleaned the pool and spent the night there. In the morning, I would get up and go to work for my dad."

Cook graduated from high school in 1949. Hoping to become a doctor, he attended Northwestern University, majoring in biology and minoring in chemistry. He worked his way through school by waiting tables and driving a taxi. One memorable event during college was the 1948 Democratic National Convention. "I drove several politicians around town," he said. "It was a fabulous experience."

After graduation in 1953, Cook entered the U.S. Army during the Korean War. His work as a medic at the Brooke Army Medical Center burn unit in San Antonio, Texas, caused him to lose his zest for becoming a doctor. "I identified with the burn patients and got too emotionally involved," he said. "I knew then that I didn't want to become a doctor, but I did realize I had an interest in the mechanical parts of medicine."

Upon his honorable discharge from the Army in 1955, Cook became an engineering recruiter for Martin Aircraft. Later, he became a catalogue editor and then worked as a scientific products salesman for American Hospital Supply Corp. In 1958, married and still living in Chicago, he co-founded MPL, Inc., which became the nation's third-largest hypodermic needle manufacturer.

Five years later, Cook left Chicago. He and his wife, Gayle, settled in Bloomington, Indiana, where he set up Cook, Inc. "The only employees were Gayle and I, working at home," he said. "She served as my secretary and quality control inspector."

The products they developed were wire guides, catheters, and needles. Cook worked out of their three-bedroom apartment, using a blowtorch, a soldering iron, and a few tools he made himself while his wife designed a catalogue of their products. Their first sale came from Illinois Masonic Hospital, which bought two units for a total of $7.

"When checks came in, we celebrated with a night out at McDonald's," he said. Little did they realize that their company would become known worldwide as a pioneer in interventional medicine, nicknamed "surgery through a needle hole." The company was the first manufacturer of coronary artery stents and nearly every type of stent used to maintain patency of cardiovascular arteries, veins, ducts, and organs.

In 1970, the company's sales surpassed $1 million for the first time. Revenues hit $100 million in 1983, and $1 billion in 2006. Cook Group quickly became the world's largest privately held medical products manufacturing business.

When asked about his phenomenal success, Cook simply shrugged. "I don't see wealth as a determination of success," he said. "It's not just wealth that makes you a success; it's what you do with your life. If you feel as if you have done a good job at whatever it is you have done, then I think that's success."

Looking back over his career, Cook was especially proud of the recognition he received from the medical societies of interventional radiology here and in Europe. "To have doctors recognize me as one of them and accept me as a layman into their societies has created my greatest feeling of accomplishment as far as my professional life is concerned," said Cook, who believed that what he had accomplished could not have happened anywhere except in the United States. "Americans are free thinkers, creative thinkers," he said. "Our freedoms set us apart from everywhere else in the world and create an environment that becomes limitless in possibilities and opportunities."

Cook advised young people to take their time discovering what they want to do in life. "Do a little job-hopping," he said. "If it takes you until you are 30 or 35 to find what you are looking for, don't despair. I was 32 before I found myself, and I never regretted the time I spent before that exploring other possibilities. All of your experiences help you to broaden your scope and become more knowledgeable."

Long before they became wealthy, the Cooks were giving back to their community. Among other pursuits, they funded a traveling brass music show that morphed into the Broadway production Blast!, which won a Tony, and an Emmy.

Another passion was historic preservation. Bill and Gayle Cook restored a southern Indiana farm home that Abraham Lincoln had visited as a boy, and they turned it over to the state in 2009, the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. They also restored a 19th-century downtown Bloomington home and put it to use as a business center. Other restoration projects include Fountain Square Mall, Graham Office Plaza, the Showers Office Complex, and the Grant Street Inn, all in downtown Bloomington.

In 1998, the Cooks helped restore Indiana's West Baden Springs Hotel, which boasted a huge domed atrium. The hotel, which had its heyday in the 1920s, closed after the Great Depression; by the mid-1990s, it was in danger of falling onto the weed-infested grounds. The Cooks funded a $90 million restoration, turning the property into a four-star hotel that became a National Historic Landmark as well as a popular resort destination.