Samuel Alexander Cooke
All of the Above and More

From the Far East comes the story of the blind men hoping to describe an elephant. In the Buddhist version, the men assert the elephant is either like a pot (the blind man who felt the elephant’s head), a winnowing basket (ear), a plowshare (tusk), a plow (trunk), a granary (body), a pillar (foot), a mortar (back), a pestle (tail) or a brush (tip of the tail).

A Jain version of the story says that six blind men were asked to determine what an elephant looked like by feeling different parts of the elephant’s body. The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe.

A king explains to them: All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features you mentioned.

There’s a Sufi version also. The story is told here to illustrate the difficulty of describing Samuel Alexander Cooke, recently retired as president of Cooke Foundation (and bumped up to emeritus status). Without getting into the deep philosophical aspects of the story (and without trying to relate body parts to community efforts), consider the varied and praiseworthy benefits that Sam Cooke has brought to Hawai‘i in his nearly 50 years of community service.

Sam’s passions include conservation, the natural and cultural history of these islands, fine art appreciation and its wide exhibition, and meaningful assistance to groups seeking community betterment. These are reflected in the aims, purposes, and charitable giving of Cooke Foundation, Ltd. A trustee since 1973, Sam became president in 1989 when Dick Cooke retired as president after 40 years’ service. His management style has combined respect for the biases as well as the achievements of the other five members with humor and a shrewd view of practical and economic realities. Early on, at a newly-instituted planning retreat, Sam transformed the alternate trustee function from merely decorative into a means of family involvement and training for future trustees. Alternates were sent to national and regional conferences; their opinions were solicited prior to each decision-making meeting; and they were able to move seamlessly into their trustee role when the time came.

Sam has been blessed with both the means and the opportunity to act upon his deep interests in the Hawaiian natural environment and the history of our islands. He was founding chairman of the Nature Conservancy Board of Governors in 1981, serving until 1992. He directed campaigns that raised at least $15 million for the protection of more than 50,000 acres of key conservation lands. The Mo‘omomi shoreline and the mauka watershed on Molokai, both areas where he spent time in his youth, are a large part of this heritage. This led to the vice chairmanship of the Nature Conservancy International Board of Governors from 1989 to 1991 where he began in 1981; he was treasurer from 1986 to 1988.

A major achievement is his service as chairman of the Honolulu Academy of Arts (now the Honolulu Museum of Art). On the Board of Trustees since 1969, Sam was chairman from 1975 to 1981 and again from 1997 to 2002. He directed a successful capital campaign for more than $30 million during a depressed economy (1999-2002) for Hawaii’s only comprehensive fine arts museum and oversaw an annual operating budget of seven million dollars.

When Hawai‘i Community Foundation was established from the 1987 merger of the eleemosynary divisions of local trust companies, Sam was a founding director of its Board of Governors and served as chairman until 1992. He remained on that Board until 2012. HCF is a public statewide charity and grants making organization; it awarded $45 million in 2012. Sam was key in bringing the current president and CEO to the fore: a major factor in the Foundation’s success. In 1995 Sam was a founder of both the Manoa Heritage Center and the Kuali‘i Foundation, an asset holding foundation which will assure the preservation of the historic home built by his grandparents over a century ago. The Manoa Heritage Center is devoted to preserving—and educating the public about—Hawaiian culture, the protection and propagation of indigenous Hawaiian plants, and the history of Manoa. Thousands of Hawai‘i school children (and adults) visit the heiau behind Kuali‘i to learn about Hawaiian natural and cultural history. The home itself is filled with Hawai‘i art works and books, the collection of a lifetime. Here Sam and his wife, Mary Moragne Cooke, raised their three daughters: Juliette, Catherine, and Edith. His partner and prime mover in the Manoa Heritage Center and Kuali‘i Foundations, Mary has served as a board member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and as a trustee of Punahou School for 43 years. Sam retired as a senior vice president of Morgan Stanley in Honolulu in 2002. Starting in 1964, he served as financial advisor to public, private, and non-profit corporations, foundations, and individuals with multimillion-dollar portfolios, and developed investments and acquisitions.

Starting with the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, where he was president from 1968 to 1980, Sam’s other community service includes board memberships of Hawai‘i Pacific University from 1991 to 2004, Conservation Fund of America (from 1992); the National Tropical Botanical Garden (1994 to 2005; vice chairman 1998 to 2005); Alternative Energy System Hawaii (1995 to 2004) and the American Farmland Trust, director 1993 to 1995. Sam has also been a vice president of Strong Foundation since 1965; this service continues.

Nationally and locally, Sam has received awards for his efforts, including two from the Aloha Chapter of the National Society of Fundraising Executives, and was declared an Outstanding Living Treasure by the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawai‘i in 1999. He and Mary were chosen Kama‘aina of the Year in 2006 by the Historic Hawai`i Foundation.

Why this long and loving career of serving the Hawai‘i community in creative and fundamental ways? “I enjoy doing it!” says Sam.