Orange County Hall of Fame Inductees : Leading Way to a Winning Tradition : Football Coach Cook Built Strong Program at Rancho Santiago

Most of the folks who walk into Bill Cook Gymnasium on the campus of Rancho Santiago College do so with little or no knowledge of the man for which the building is named.

Most go there to watch the men’s basketball team, which has become one of the biggest success stories in the state the past two seasons.

The Dons have won back-to-back state championships under Coach Dana Pagett.

And it’s fitting that the defending champion’s home court is in Bill Cook Gymnasium. For if ever there was anyone who represented the excellence the Rancho Santiago basketball program has come to be associated with, it was Andrew J. (Bill) Cook.

Cook, a long-time football coach at then Santa Ana College, will be inducted posthumously into the Orange County Hall of Fame Oct. 29.

Cook joins Homer Beatty, another former Dons’ football coach, in entering the hall this year.

John Ward, who replaced Cook as coach of the Dons, and Paul Cleary, who played for Cook in the early ‘40s, are already Orange County Hall of Fame members.

Cook was elected posthumously to the California Community College Sports Hall of Fame in 1987.

“I never met a more truthful man,” said Beatty, who coached at Santa Ana from 1959 to 1962, of Cook. “There was never a question of wrong-doing in his program. He wouldn’t stand for it. He was that kind of man.”

Cook died of a heart attack at age 71 on the last day of March in 1976, but not before he helped Santa Ana College become known as one of the most outstanding football programs in the country.

Cook took over the Santa Ana football program in 1927, while still playing at USC. He remained head coach until 1952.

Cook is the winningest football coach in the history of the program with a record of 167-70-24 in 25 seasons. No football was played in 1943 because of World War II.

His 1940 and ’42 teams won national championships. The Dons won their other national title in 1962 under Beatty.

From 1940 to 1942, Cook’s teams went 31-1. Their only loss was in 1941 to Pasadena, a team that included one of the best athletes in Los Angeles history. Jackie Robinson, who went on to excel at UCLA and with the Brooklyn Dodgers, returned a punt 85 yards for a touchdown in the closing minutes to clinch the victory.

Cook’s teams won 11 conference titles and three in a row, three different times (1936-38, 1940-42 and 1948-50). His teams were mostly known for their wide-open style of play in a time when defense and conservative offenses ruled the day.

Cook was part of the selection committee that hired Dick Gorrie, who coached Santa Ana’s football teams from 1964 to 1975. Gorrie is currently golf coach at Rancho Santiago.

“The thing that impressed me about Bill Cook was that there was no doubt who was in control,” said Gorrie, who also played against Cook and Santa Ana when he was at Pasadena in the early ‘50s. “But it was always in a positive way. He always had total respect and admiration of the community as well. He was like the Pied Piper. They would do whatever he said.”

Long before there was Bill Cook the coach, there was Bill Cook the athlete.

Cook was born in El Toro and raised in Anaheim. He started as a student at Anaheim High, in 1918, when the school didn’t have a football team.

But Cook and some classmates took care of that.

“A bunch of us petitioned the school board to let us have a team,” Cook said in a 1973 interview. He went on to earn 15 varsity letters at Anaheim.

He had four letters in basketball as a 5-foot-6 forward, and four more in baseball as a pitcher and shortstop. Cook received four more letters in track as a sprinter and the final three came in football, where he was a 156-pound running back.

Cook started college at Stanford as a geology major in 1923, but soon transferred to USC and switched his major to physical education. His goal was to become a coach.

Cook played for the Trojans from 1925-27 as a running back and then worked as a graduate assistant under USC Coach Howard Jones.

Cook also had a short-lived professional career as a member of a team made up of former college players that took on the Red Grange All-Stars.

The game was played in the Coliseum back before it never rained in Southern California.

“The field looked like a lake,” Cook once said. “Grange didn’t like that very much. We’d try to hold ‘em down and make them blow bubbles.”

Cook, who earned $75 for the game, had a chance to play against the All-Stars again the next week in San Diego, but passed because he had already told a friend he would go duck hunting with him.

Cook retired from coaching after the 1952 season and continued as Santa Ana’s athletic director until 1958, when he became supervisor of physical education for the Santa Ana School System.

The gym was dedicated to Cook on May 5, 1956.

“He really left a mark around this campus,” Gorrie said. “He was one of those guys who you met for about two minutes and you were saying, ‘I really like this guy.’ ”

Hall of Fame Banquet Facts

WHAT: 11th Orange County Hall of Fame Banquet.

WHEN: Tuesday, Oct. 29.

WHERE: Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim.

HIGHLIGHTS: Tickets, $100 each or $1,000 for a table of 10, can be secured by calling (714) 935-0199. The affair (cocktails at 6 p.m, dinner at 7) will include the induction of Bobby Knoop, Pat McInally, Bruce Penhall, Dwight Stones, Shirley Topley, Homer Beatty, Bill Cook, Alex Omalev and Bertha Ragan Tickey.