Former Va. House Speaker John Warren Cooke dies

John Warren Cooke, a former speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates and the last son of a Confederate veteran to sit in the General Assembly, died Saturday at Palace Green, his home on Put In Creek in Mathews.

The 94-year-old Mathews native, born when his father was 76, was the son of the Rev. Giles Buckner Cooke, an Episcopal priest who served on the personal staff of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee during the Civil War, and Katharine Grosh Cooke.

Mr. Cooke, who had a foot in three centuries, was elected to the House as a Democrat in 1941 and did not seek re-election in 1979, setting a record for the number of terms served.

He served as House majority leader from 1956 to 1968 and as the powerful speaker of the House, who controls the flow of legislation and makes committee assignments, from 1968 until 1980.

At his retirement, he represented Essex, Gloucester, King and Queen, King William, Mathews and Middlesex counties. From 1966 to 1972, he also represented Charles City and New Kent counties.

In a House dominated by Democrats, Mr. Cooke, a pillar of the Byrd organization, did the unheard-of: He included a Republican among the House's budget negotiators, which he termed "a matter of fairness," and later appointed more Republicans, women and liberals to major committees.

"Civility was his code [in the House], and he worked wonders with it," former Gov. Gerald L. Baliles recalled in a 2003 speech at the dedication of the John Warren Cooke Conference Center of the Mathews Memorial Library.

The publisher and former president of Tidewater Newspapers Inc., which publishes the Gazette-Journal in Mathews and Gloucester counties, he was pivotal in bringing the General Assembly, whose committees often deliberated in executive sessions, under the Freedom of Information Act during the late 1970s.

He was a charter member of the first Mathews Rotary Club, former president of the Tidewater Baseball League, former chairman of the Mathews Ration and Price Control Board and former chairman of the Mathews County Democratic Committee.

Survivors include his wife since 1947, Anne Brown Rawn Cooke; a son, Giles Buckner Cooke III of Williamsburg; and a daughter, Elsa VanNess Verbyla of Mathews.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete.