Rita Ann Cook

18 November 1949 —3 May 2024

On this day, 3 May 2024, my wife of 54 years died unexpectedly, a

few days after a major surgery.

Rita had been a hospice social worker and grief counselor for many

years. This was her calling and she was simply a master at her

profession. The many people she trained would frequently ask her

``How do you know what to say in this or that very personal or

tragic situation?’’  For me Rita was simply the most caring and

loving person I had ever met. We would often talk to each other

about how lucky we had been in life: me as a physics professor and

researcher (all I had ever wanted to be) and her doing exactly what

she had dreamed of doing. Both of us felt we had lived long and

productive lives, we had many good friends, and, if we should die

tomorrow, we agreed we would have already gotten our full share

out of life and more.

When Rita was young (about 15 years) she volunteered as a

``candy-striper’’ at Charity Hospital in New Orleans — always

wanting to help others. When she was about 17, she decided to raise

money for Danny Thomas’ St Jude Hospital. As it turned out she

raised more money than anyone else in the country, and Danny

Thomas came to New Orleans, he flew Rita to Las Vegas for his

annual meeting of fund raisers, and he talked about Rita for an hour

on stage before presenting her with the Jerry Nicholson Award for

the outstanding teen volunteer 1968.

After this time, she joined the Air Force, where I first met her. She

was one of the first women in the Air Force trained to repair aircraft.

However when she arrived at Fairchild AFB to do her job, the

general there would not let women near any of his aircraft, and she

ended up being a briefer, presenting various base issues to the

general.

After dating at a distance for several months (I was at Vandenberg

AFB, California and she was at Fairchild AFB, Washington State),

by taking Air Force and Navy hops to see each other; one evening I

ask her to marry me over the phone and sent her a wedding ring a bit

later. Not long after this she had some medical problems and took a

medical discharge from the Air Force. We were married in New

Orleans and lived in Tucson, AZ where I completed an education

assignment.

We lived a typical Air Force life, going from base to base every four

or five years. First to Officer Training School in Texas, then to the

Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in Dayton, Ohio. This was

followed by five years at the Air Force Research Laboratory in

Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we had our first son, Joseph

Albert Cook. Then off to the Lawrence Livermore National

Laboratory in California, where we had our second son Robert Scott

Cook. Then back to AFIT in Dayton, where now I was a professor

rather than a student. And finally I was sent to the Air Force

Academy in Colorado Springs Colorado.

During all this time, Rita was raising our family, and as the boys got

older she began to feel she needed to do something more with her

life. So she began a degree program at the University of Colorado at

Colorado Springs (UCCS) in psychology and gerontology. Like

most students returning to school later in life, Rita wondered if she

would be able to compete with the younger students.                                        

But she turned out to be an A-student, except in physics,

the field of her professor husband.

It was about this time I retired from the Air Force and took a

teaching job at Northern Kentucky University, and Rita stayed

behind to finish her degree. This was a hard time for the family. Our

older son was in a serious car accident, we had legal problems in

attempting to buy a house, and teaching at the university was not

ideal. So, when the opportunity arose, we returned to the Air Force

Academy in Colorado. After receiving her bachelors degree, she

went on to the University of Denver to earn her masters degree in

social work. She did this together with two of her good friend.

With her masters degree in hand, Rita went to Pikes Peak Hospice,

and although there were no positions available in the hospice at the

time, she convinced them to hire her (this is classic Rita!). This was

the beginning of her career as a hospice social worker, for which she

won state-wide awards for her work and established herself as a

leading social worker and grief therapist in the state. It did not take

long before, every time we went out to a mall or to a street

downtown, people would approach Rita thanking her for taking care

of their loved ones at the end of their lives. Rita began grief

programs at the hospice for children whose parents were dying, and

for parents whose children were dying. She had endless stories from

dying children about how the children viewed their situation. Most

of her work was in the homes of the dying patients. Most of us want

to do things that make the world a better place or help people. I

know of no one who has accomplished this better that Rita Cook.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the city of Rita’s birth,

Rita felt she had to do something to help in the hurricane relief

effort. Because Rita knew the culture of the city and with her hospice experience,

Rita was chosen for the Disaster Mortuary

Operational Response Team (DMORT) of the federal government.

In the Katrina relief effort, Rita was the one who informed families

of the death of their loved ones when their remains had been

identified by DNA. She did this for hundreds of human remains. She

told me that, despite her experience in hospice, this work was far

more difficult than she had expected. As a DMORT member Rita

was deployed several times after Katrina to mass casualty events.

She always had a suitcase packed for a quick departure. This she did

while continuing her regular hospice work; it was a `part-time’ job.

Eventually, Rita’s work became too burdensome, as she had

developed a number of pain issues brought on by arthritic and other

afflictions. So she had to retire from hospice work. For her this was

a great loss. She enjoyed working in the large yard of our home (our

house is on five acres in a pine forrest), but eventually this also

became too painful. She could only avoid the pain of motion by

sitting still in her lounge chair, and this, for her, was very frustrating.

Rita wanted (or did not want) two things at the end of her life: she

always wanted to die before me — a wish which did not seem

likely, given that I was six years older than her and men generally

die earlier than women — and secondly, she never wanted to be

placed in a nursing home; she wanted to die at home. Rita had

absolutely no fear of dying. On several occasions she told me she

was ready to go. Her quality of life had decreased substantially

because of pain, and her inability to continue with her life work, and

I believe she was carrying on only to serve me — we loved each

other dearly. The recent surgery was an attempt to relieve some of

her pain. But during the first two days after the surgery I could see

that her back pain had not been cured by the surgery.

Nevertheless, she seemed to be improving when, on day four after the surgery,                                    

she lost consciousness and died.

So her death is only a tragedy for me and others who loved her. The

love of my life is gone. But Rita died the way she wanted: she died

before me, she died at home and not in a nursing home, and her

death was quick and easy without prolonged debilitation or

suffering. I have to believe her life would not have been good had

she lived, and that her death spared her a future of suffering. She

had a long productive life which she enjoyed, and she touched so

many peoples lives, most of all my own.

Rita will be cremated and we will spread her ashes in a special place

near New Orleans that we both loved. There will not be a formal

funeral ceremony. I expect to have a small gathering of her friends,

probably at our home, to celebrate her life, but plans for that are not

yet in place. These were her wishes.