The 2015 Hal Brook Perry Distinguished Alumni Award
Charles James Cook
Priest, educator, mentor, consultant, servant leader. You have blessed Seminary of the Southwest with your 44-year association, beginning with your matriculation to the MDiv in 1971 and continuing to the present as professor emeritus of pastoral theology, sometimes adjunct professor and author of a history of the seminary, Striking Up for a New World, published on the occasion of the seminary’s 60-year anniversary.
Son of Texas, Pampa in the Texas Panhandle to be exact, you have slowed the world down with students and colleagues alike with your knack for storytelling and your gentle counsel to take time to read the landscape before hurrying to change.
You served parishes in Texas, North Carolina and Missouri before returning to your alma mater in 1985 to be assistant professor of pastoral theology and director of theological field education and then professor of pastoral theology. Your students and colleagues have benefitted from your perspective on parish life. “Charlie’s wisdom about congregational leadership has shaped generations of our graduates,” says Dean Kittredge. “His comic insight into human character and parish life continues to nourish his former students who speak of drawing on his teaching ‘almost daily.’ He offers his compassionate support and spiritual counsel to many now in Austin and the Panhandle and beyond.”
Your faculty colleagues so respected your contributions to the life of the faculty and your legacy of collaboration and commitment that they established the Charles J. Cook Award in Servant Leadership, which is given each year at Matriculation to someone who embodies the Christian commitment to selfless service on behalf of others.
The late Reid Morgan nominated you for this distinguished alumni award, recalling that you have been a “decisive force for good” throughout the church and that you have helped “mold the hearts of countless students, lay folk, bishops, priests and deacons” and instilled the “heart of a servant into all.”
Your former student and friend, Bishop Scott Mayer, thanked God for sending you to Southwest, “a boy from Pampa, who became an icon to many, and yet somehow simultaneously, a friend.” Charlie, your seminary and Alumni Association are honored to present you with the 2015 Hal Brook Perry Distinguished Alumni Award.
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge Stephen Kidd
Dean and President Alumni Association President
