As owner, operator and trainer at the Atlanta School of Gymnastics in Tucker, Tom Cook liked to keep things light.
“Mostly, I remember his jokes,” said daughter Tenise Cook of Johns Creek. “He put a sense of humor into pretty much everything he did. His jokes were pretty corny, so we were laughing at him, not really with him.”
Mr. Cook encouraged his five children to participate in gymnastics at the academy he and his former wife, Glenda, founded in 1976.
“All of us did gymnastics at one point in our lives,” Tenise Cook said. “He was a very involved father.”
The Cooks’ devotion to the sport included full-time training for future Olympian Kathy Johnson-Clarke, who lived with the family for more than a year.
“The depth of their commitment to and love for me sustained me through immeasurably difficult times and in the end gave me the happiest times of my career,” she said.
Clarke remembers the only time Mr. Cook made her cry.
Having spent much of her teens under the Cooks’ guidance, Clarke had made the 1980 Olympic Team but wanted to continue after the U.S. boycott kept her from participating. Mr. Cook encouraged her to leave Atlanta and train with other Olympic-caliber athletes at the national team coach’s gym in Los Angeles.
“The longest, most painful drive I’ve ever taken was when Tom drove me to the airport with two giant trunks in tow,” she said. “I had never seen Tom cry. So when I saw his shoulders shaking from the back of the van I just dropped my head and cried, too. I wanted desperately to say, ‘Turn around...go back...I’m not going...’ When we pulled up to the airport he simply got out of the van and hugged me and said without hesitation, “You’re doing the right thing’.”
Clarke went on to win silver and bronze medals at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Thomas Allen Cook, 66, died Wednesday at Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville from complications of pancreatitis. The funeral will be at 2 p.m. Saturday at Wages & Sons Gwinnett Chapel in Lawerenceville.
Born Aug. 6, 1943, in Waukeegan, Ill., he began competing in gymnastics in high school, then at Southern Illinois University where he placed fourth in the rings in the NCAA finals.
He moved to Athens to work on a doctorate in systems administration, and while judging a gymnastics competition, he met Glenda. They married in 1972.
When the couple opened the Academy in Tucker in 1976, it was at the onset of the gymnastics frenzy over Romanian Olympic medalist Nadia Comaneci.
“We expected maybe a few hundred kids,” Glenda Cook said. “I can’t remember the number, but we opened the doors with like 5,000 kids coming in. We had to hire 10 more teachers immediately.”
The couple were divorced in 1988. He married Stacy Hamrick in 1990.
“We will all miss him,” Stacy Cook said.
Mr. Cook went into semi retirement last year, but remained active at the gym. He was inducted into the USA Gymnastics Region 8 Hall of Fame in June.
Other survivors include: children, Taryn Cook Chenoweth of Lawrenceville; Travis Allen Cook of Virginia Beach, Va.; Sean Michael Cotter and Thomas Allen Cook, II both of Lilburn; brother, Robert Cook of Jacksonville.
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