Congratulations to Montgomery’s David & Evonne Cook. After 13 years they are saying goodbye to The Villages and hello to their new home in Manteca. Â
David Cook was an Association Director on the Board of Directors for six years. He was President of the ABOD for three of those six years.
David was President during turbulent times. He helped pull us through the COVID Pandemic, two droughts and a new management agreement.
After leaving the ABOD, David chaired the ABOD Insurance Committee that has done a super job of helping The Villages manage our biggest expense, insurance. He was also a board member of the Bocce and Pickleball Club, webmaster for the Bocce, Pickleball and Pin Seekers Clubs. He was Vice President of the Ironman Short Nine men’s golf club, five years of Handicap and Championship calculations for the Ironmen, Pickleball Ad Hoc Committee member for the Club Board, Staffer at WOW training sessions and a volunteer for EPC communications staff. David also created The Villages Webmaster Guild and served as its President for three years.
David hiked all of The Villages hiking trails in one day. And that was just for a warmup so he could actually climb, at age 65, Mt. Kilimanjaro. But his real claim to fame, was hitting a golf ball off the top of Kilimanjaro with a 7-iron and posing with a copy of The Villager.
He has also hiked Mts Fuji and Whitney. David has participated in three Ironman Triathlons in France, Florida and Idaho. He has done dozens of shorter triathlons and mountain bike triathlons, dozens of marathons, one 50-mile ultramarathon run and several 50-K mountain ultramarathons. David has run segments of Calistoga to Santa Cruz 18-hour group run (including the full-moon midnight section over the Golden Gate Bridge past the National Guard units stationed there just after 9/11), a dozen Alcatraz to Aquatic Cove and Crissy Fields open water swims.
David has done the San Francisco to Los Angeles Diabetes Ride. Mountain biking San Jose to Capitola for brunch. His favorite “short” bike rides these days is through the hills from The Villages to Morgan Hill to meet up for lunch with his wife. In the fall of 2024, David did a bucket list ride up Mont Ventoux in France, one of the hardest peaks in the Tour de France routes.
Born in Modesto, California. In high school he rewrote the Student Association constitution, earned a college scholarship from the Modesto Bee and was a Life Member CSF, and gave the Invocation at his high school graduation. It’s no surprise David became President of The Villages Association.
David went on to graduate from UC Davis in Electrical Engineering and a BS in Chemistry, was President of the UC Davis Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society and student speaker at the College of Engineering Graduation in 1973. He was President of the student chapter of IEEE.
David received his MSEE from Stanford University (Got an A+ in Donald Knuth’s Algorithms graduate computer science class at Standford), graduate seminars with Vint Cerf on this new thing called the internet! Robert Metcalf was his advisor, who had just invented and deployed the ethernet at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).
Not only was David there at the beginning of the internet, but he also attended the Homebrew Computer Club meeting and spoke with two young guys introducing their new invention. Their names were Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, and they were introducing their Apple 1 personal computer.
David’s career as an engineer had him traveling internationally and earning him multiple million-mile frequent flyer miles. He’s made 60-plus trips to Japan, side trips to Hong Kong, China and one round-the-world trip—Japan/Hong Kong/Thailand/Nepal/India/Egypt/UK—and now, Manteca.
David has expressed his enjoyment here at The Villages, with the supportive and friendly environment created by the clubs and staff and the beautiful and safe environment. He wants to share his constant amazement at the diversity, skills, and knowledge of Villages residents, and give thanks to the many friends he and Evonne made over the years and their kindness. He will miss The Villages and The Villages certainly will miss him. Thank you, David, for your time and your many contributions. We wish you and Evonne, your bride of 52 years, the best at your new home.
One last thing. David’s new home is a Davis-Stirling HOA community. I wonder what he’ll be doing in six months!
